I  send  you,  v/ith  my  grateful  regards, 
this  quaint^col.lection  cif  relics.  • 

T-^  ^'-".»*'    •         '*  r.hrrX*^ti  out  psy  wj.  .shf^,  U, 

t;h-  evil 8  .3., ■St,  -Tftt  >'ici  a.r  • th^  -  rinfirv  i^rh 
f'r,         HrKl       HfKi  .,  Mr.  V.w»8 

rtipuMicf:n3,  of  r.h6  Crnvalih  nnU  Hfiy.^r  jlt'rfln*? 

:-nkPd        «o  do,  wnvj-r  l;h«  nf^::?  j-rlnarv"' 
•     •  a'Kl  I  3c'^i^-v  all  thr.t.'v/fi 

were  *iyorkln«  w^rtly       r«Kiuo«,  5f  poKj^thlft, 
thf  da."]a^5<*  dcvne  by  i.h^.B  /s">''-'**-n-f:ofida  8tf;tuKi». 
I  ThR  2:rav«ati  oltis<^n,  ho  fiv.-^r,  i»j;.8t. 

inr  --o.Av^^v  fx  hrivr  na^,  y«n  hftara  hv^v  iir" 
c-    iaco         ,  r,if;nfxi  ihf>  ciroal<tr  which  -vaa 

n  Apv'lX  ^"i^lih,  that  t,hf  .-y        wn«  r-5^r«ly 

o  hr^  v/f;rk  of  n#ivj  i>ar1i3.v'.^,  v.hj.rd  purtiin;* 

■  '^ntr.f  lifiTviO'  If 

R-'Ut  its  i;..;^x.    T-   »  An  ftx  cX^arlv 
J'     ,  ■ '^^■J       offr,r:j  nr>  ohfck,  -.hr  IhW 

 '  '-'^^^  ^'--^  by  :'r*i.ir.AcH  r.r  ha'^^^-  n.";T.r,jlnf? 

'cu'"     '  Arty  your  vv^fff?  1,0  Wn  of 


^^^^^^  VUW^  ^ 

that  ;r;;r^f*iP5    m\  iv:^-   ?:r><'ink  <ivt?*  w-^fi- 

urf?  for  tul'-tnii  ««w  r>^r  ?..vl)'-r^y  (twr 

fo<;<5n  enact. \ts  f.^Mf  %,\\  r*?r^?rti  Jt 

thnt,  year  by  'i^nr  ,         <)p:?ra^lonr,  ■h'AA?,  ThXX 

petty 

»akB  even  bh:st  la^  wfsrk  fT^?'  riiripj.^  ci,i:y  j^^^v 

Lf?,t  ui;  pray  y^\<k  '^^nrfej  t^j  ?innr  i.nlrO 
power,  5.141,  ^vj^ri  if  A;  S«  ^-fHrf^  nfncft, 

DtT>         will  fitv^ir  fii^HJif^fff  In  '^HJijs  ani  in  nlj, 

rjKi  let  It  a  U-^r^X^m^         .\#»v       '.ij^  ^i^rsajr 

Lt^fe       pr^*:^,  th.-ttg  hiijr^rf  -^'^ 

vol?.  f-TCti,  \ 

«iv  civil  l?.b-  rtyp  .'Vdf-r-t.  jtff^-s  ,4 a  ^.i-;^ 

Xo^nvU  hlj^My^-i^  in^hl^cU^^ 

..  fy-ny  vt^^iKtYt  i;  ^^^fiuAf;  ?;riu-  ":.ir:^ai-« 
cx^yw  ©a  o^ir  On^ts  but.  fih^^rc  Un»t; 


Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


Citizens  Union 


THE  CITY  FOR  THE  PEOPLE 


The  UNION  is  made  up  of  citizens  of  all  opin- 
ions, all  creeds,  and  all  occupations,  who  believe 
that  the  City  should  be  governed  by  the  People 
and  for  the  People,  not  by  the  Bosses  nor  for  the 
Bosses.  It  is  a  union  of  men  in  all  employments; 
in  business,  in  the  trades,  in  the  professions ; 
standing  on  the  common  ground  of  good  citizen- 
ship. Honest,  efficient,  and  intelligent  city  gov- 
ernment is  the  object  of  the  UNION.  Every 
voter  who  believes  in  that  object  is  asked  to 
join,  without  regard  to  his  opinion  as  a  Repub- 
lican, a  Gold  Democrat,  a  Silver  Democrat,  or 
as  a  member  of  any  National  party  whatever. 
The  UNION  has  no  concern  with  Coinage, 
Free  Trade,  or  Protection,  or  with  National  or 
State  politics  in  any  form. 

The  UNION  demands  an  honest  and  efficient 
administration,  good  schools,  clean  streets,  more 
breathing  spaces,  better  housing  in  the  over- 
crowded parts  of  the  City,  better  rapid  transit 
facilities,  strict  supervision  of  the  City's  fran- 
chises, a  full  return  for  public  privileges  granted 
to  corporations,  and  a  just  and  fair  enforcement 
of  local  statutes  and  ordinances. 

The  UNION  demands  that  our  City  officers 
shall  be  chosen  BECAUSE  they  can  be  trusted 
to  work  for  these  objects  only;  NOT  BECAUSE 
they  are  ready  and  able  to  promote  the  aims 
and  ambitions  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  national 
parties.  In  national  elections  we  must  have 
national  issues  ;  but  in  city  elections  city  issues 
alone  should  be  considered. 

ENROLLMENT  as  a  member  of  the  UNION 
does  not  mean  that  a  voter  gives  up  his  party  or 
his  individual  opinion  on  national  issues.  ALL 
CITIZENS,  of  whatever  party,  who  desire  that 
the  City  shall  be  governed  honestly  and  well,  are 
strongly  urged  to  enroll  as  members  of  the 
UNION. 


Citizens  Union 


HEADQUARTERS 
NO.  39  EAST  23D  STREET 

Officers 

Robert  Fulton  Cutting,  -  -  .  Chairman 
Charles  Stewart  Smith,  -  -  Vice-Chairman 
J.  Kennedy  Tod,  ....  Treasurer 
John  C.  Clark,  Secretary 


Executive 
James  B.  Reyr 
Joel  B.  Erhardt 
Edward  D.  Page 
William  B.  Hornblower 
Edward  A.  Drake 
Henry  R.  Kunhardt 
John  G.  Agar 
John  Claflin 
James  Loeb 
George  Tombleson 

John  Frar 


Committee 
)lds,  Chairman 

Charles  C.  Nadal 

Elihu  Root 

John  B.  Pine 

James  W.  Pryor 

Hubert  Cillis 

Joseph  Larocque 

Henry  White 

Richard  Watson  Gilder 

William  M.  Kingsley 
kenheimer 


Finance  Committee 
J.  Kennedy  Tod.  Chairman 
Charles  Stewart  Smith 
Jacob  H.  Schiff 
Charles  T.  Barney 
W.  Lanman  Bull 
Woodbury  Langdon 
Charles  Lanier 
R.  Somers  Hayes 


Sub-Committee  on  Enrollment  and  District  Organizath 
John  B.  Pine,  Chairman 
Charles  C.  Nadal  John  Frankenheimer 

Henry  R.  Kunhardt  William  M.  Kingsley 


[Form  5] 


cv-i7J^As  irrxoN—  riry  club 


*»r.T.  Alf^xand-  r  John  J.  ^fop-p'^r 

T/lllard  nrnv.-n  'Win,  ^ravora  Jfron« 

'-Inoch  Hrriry  c^rfrifT  !T<>wf^TT  Martin 

^.  7nr>tAr  Cff»f^.  s.  Pay /.on 

H*'>bt;*  ..  .  IJr.:i-:3fit  Oii.'iS,  Shaw 

v~.  •  •  ttj  i»- '  An 


who 

T-tinKy^'XhrfiH  of  the  m*^)!!  ^wliorf  In  UiJ*?  for 
?**?.h  7^r>w  :md  civil  llber^.y  und  ';.1y.U  sn'-vic*?  '•'ifom  in 

to  .-:.tn6  to,~»}th'ar  r.t  th»i  Qi'.-  ''^lub  on  ArriX  ;e7,  X8«>B, 
nnd  /iK^UT"n  tO(~«th«r  find  r-ray  fc^  b'^ttwr  tines, 

Th*j  -IJfcit  of  th«  2:6  i3          rorth  in  this  little 
book,  'Vhich  has  b'j'jn  prn^rif^rnd  to  **Mnlnd  yt^n  ho*r  r:nch 
pat^'iots  nay  dlsajTren  ar>  to  rirhts  and  r#i:n»jdies, 

?fT",  ('rdkin's  tjasay  h?i3  b»j»in  add^d  to  this 
coll*iction  of  t'*act3,  not  h'^o'->.H*i  .'^inybr-dy  thirk.-  hn  is  Tv 
pat«-iot>  but  bBoausH      part  vf  vhAt  h'i  3»i;^s  is  tn;e, 

J^i-,  f?t*jrnQ's  tjssai'  is  'idd^^d,  i>ar^ly  -for  son« 
v'^iiih  it  tfjlls  and  partly  to   -^arn  yott  that  his  favorite 
■"♦jR^dy  consists  In  harassinf;  th'j  bH""ildHrfid  voter  -^ith 
nn^  complications.     r>on«  of  nv-  think  th?it  suoh  '~en*idi»}S 
liS  th»^  n'^^v  ;'rina''y  la'-v  ra-J  ~inr.  ^ity  •"•jprw  '.»5ntatiiin  zr^ 
'vors«j  r,han  thH  Li«Ha?3«, 

li'p.  Sh'jpa'*d»  «5  flssay  is  addfid,  partly  fc  th« 
triit.h  it  t'jlls  rxnri  pa'*tly  to  '-'■jriind  yoi*  that  ♦7V«n  in 
Brortklyn  it  ban  bK*3n  r^r.-ird'jd  as  qvitn  an  achitjvjrrjnt 
to  rais^  a  f»jM^  thnisand  a  yoar  for  th^  f  A,  ht  for  lib»^rty, 

••alf  our  sr.'-T'.-Mrs  ar«^  h^<imaH  th'^.  T^^'ooklyn 
oanpai^n  -^mnt  to  Ta/Tiany  by  d^^ffx^it  in  1'>D7,  and  P'-ooklp'^ 
v/»int  by  d*jfault  b*icau3»*  nobody  th^jrn  carnd  to  p>iy  an;v'- 
ihint:  for  o rf;;^n i nation. 


Tw*  mn,  of  '•hoB^  on  o-,;r  l.Utlu  list,  criild 
not  oom^i  'io  this  .l.ln»i«r,  Tjhowj^**  xho:;  h,'ict  hwcorafj  prric^.l- 
c^ol  patriots.     nhriTiHB  nrxrrxth  J.'csfjs  cnuld  not  con^ 

^*irH  .1tn.lnr  vO£:gth«r,  ^an  nhovijlln,-:  coal  on  th»*  N.^h^int. 
»»U  noRt  of  th'S  r«r.n  cf  u.o  not  ton*5th*3r.    0\ir  d.lnnor  tocX 
plac'i  In  th'i  ?Mrst.  ^7«.5jc  cf  th^i  Sparj.toh  T/ar;  ^m^i  ncn^  cf 
us  h;i,i  r.hf*n  ^ilrfi^i.^y  l^jAirnfid  how  hani  It  .ts  to  .lay  piAns 
for  ou»-  o^vn  fr^jHdora  ?vh.tl*?  our  brothnrs  and  ffi«nd«  f.r« 
gclni::  to  th*}  front  to  savn  olhnr  rvm  from  wors*-  i.]':)rf}S3- 
lon.     B^it  l»3t  U3  nr*  qu.lt»*  for^^jt,  th«  future).     In  !..lnw  of 
'^ar,  pr*ijpar«  for  pfjace. 


*»  Y'-'iir  land,  <r,tr^ri,  nrs  .Hvn-:;r        in  ymr  prBSfjnc**** 
If  th'i**')  had  not  bH'^n  "InifT,  unto  us  ;i  v«r;'  snail  rt*nr,>?int, 
v«j  sho»ld  hav'i  b^'*^n  as  3orlon,  n.nd  ^«  f^houl^i  hf*.VH  h^nn 

*  Thy  pr,tnc»??i5  n'^'i  x  x  :<  conp'J-ntons  of  thlf^v^js: 


THE 

ATLANTIC  MONTHLY: 
a  iHaga?tne  of  literature,  Science,  ^xt,  anD  ^BoUticjJ. 

Vol.  LXXXI.  —  JANUARY,  1898.  —  No.  CCCCLXXXIII. 
THE  GROWTH  AND  EXPRESSION  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION. 


Public  opinion,  like  democracy  itself, 
is  a  new  power  which  has  come  into  the 
world  since  the  Middle  Ages.  In  fact, 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  before  the  French  Re- 
volution nothing  of  the  kind  was  known 
or  dreamt  of  in  Europe.  There  was  a 
certain  truth  in  Louis  XIV.'s  statement, 
which  now  sounds  so  droll,  that  he  was 
himself  the  state.  Public  opinion  was 
his  opinion.  In  England,  it  may  be  said 
with  equal  safety,  there  was  nothing  that 
could  be  called  public  opinion,  in  the  mod- 
ern sense,  before  the  passage  of  the  Re- 
form Bill.  It  began  to  form  itself  slowly 
after  1816.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  forced 
to  remark  in  a  letter  to  Croker  in  March, 
1820 :  — 

"  Do  you  not  think  that  the  tone  of 
England,  of  that  great  compound  of  fol- 
ly, weakness,  prejudice,  wrong  feeling, 
right  feeling,  obstinacy,  or  newspaper 
paragraphs,  which  is  called  public  opin- 
ion, is  more  liberal  —  to  use  an  odious 
but  intelligible  phrase  —  than  the  policy 
of  the  government  ?  Do  not  you  think 
that  there  is  a  feeling  becoming  daily 
more  general  and  more  confirmed  — 
that  is  independent  of  the  pressure  of 
taxation,  or  any  immediate  cause  —  in 
favor  of  some  undefined  change  in  the 
mode  of  governing  the  country  ?  It 
seems  to  me  a  curious  crisis,  when  pub- 
lic opinion  never  had  such  influence  in 
public  measures,  and  yet  never  was  so 
dissatisfied  with  the  share  which  it  pos- 
sessed. It  is  growing  too  large  for  the 
channels  that  it  has  been  accustomed  to 
run  through.    God  knows  it  is  veiy  dif- 


ficult to  widen  them  equally  in  propor- 
tion to  the  size  and  force  of  the  current 
which  they  have  to  convey,  but  the  en- 
gineers that  made  them  never  dreamed 
of  various  streams  that  are  now  strug- 
gling for  vent." 

In  short.  Peel  perceived  the  growth 
of  the  force,  and  he  recognized  it  as  a 
new  force.  In  America  public  opinion 
can  hardly  be  said  to  have  existed  before 
the  Revolution.  The  opinions  of  leading 
men,  of  clergymen  and  large  landholders, 
wei'e  very  powerful,  and  settled  most  of 
the  affairs  of  state,  but  the  opinion  of  the 
majority  did  not  count  for  much,  and  the 
majority,  in  truth,  did  not  think  that  it 
should.  In  other  words,  public  opinion 
had  not  been  created.  It  was  the  excite- 
ment of  the  Revolutionary  War  which 
brought  it  into  existence,  and  made  it 
seem  omnipotent.  It  is  obvious,  how- 
ever, that  there  are  two  kinds  of  public 
opinion.  One  kind  is  the  popular  belief 
in  the  fitness  or  rightness  of  something, 
which  Mr.  Balfour  calls  "  climate,"  a  be- 
lief that  certain  lines  of  conduct  should 
be  followed,  or  a  certain  opinion  held,  by 
good  citizens,  or  right  thinking  persons. 
Such  a  belief  does  not  impose  any  duty 
on  anybody  beyond  outward  conformity 
to  the  received  standards.  The  kind  I 
am  now  talking  of  is  the  public  opinion, 
or  consensus  of  opinion,  among  large 
bodies  of  persons,  which  acts  as  a  politi- 
cal force,  imposing  on  those  in  authority 
certain  enactments,  or  certain  lines  of  pol- 
icy. The  first  of  these  does  not  change, 
and  is  not  seriously  modified  in  much 


2 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


less  than  fifty  years.  The  second  is  be- 
ing incessantly  modified  by  the  events  of 
the  day. 

All  the  writers  on  politics  are  agreed 
as  to  the  influence  which  this  latter  pub- 
lic opinion  ought  to  have  on  government. 
They  all  acknowledge  that  in  modern  con- 
stitutional states  it  ought  to  be  omnijjo- 
tent.  It  is  in  deciding  from  what  source 
it  should  come  that  the  democrats  and 
the  aristocrats  part  company.  Accord- 
ing to  the  aristocratic  school,  it  should 
emanate  only  from  persons  possessing  a 
moderate  amount  of  property,  on  the  as- 
sumption that  the  possession  of  property 
argues  some  degree  of  intelligence  and 
interest  in  public  affairs.  According  to 
the  democratic  school,  it  should  emanate 
from  the  majority  of  the  adult  males,  on 
the  assumption  that  it  is  only  in  this  way 
that  legislators  can  be  made  to  consult 
the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  num- 
ber, and  that,  in  the  long  run,  the  major- 
ity of  adult  males  are  pretty  sure  to  be 
right  about  public  questions.  President 
Lincoln  came  near  defining  this  theoiy 
when  he  said,  "  You  can  fool  part  of  the 
people  all  the  time,  and  all  the  people 
part  of  the  time,  but  you  cannot  fool 
all  the  people  all  tlie  time."  This  prob- 
ably meant  that  under  the  democratic 
system  public  opinion  forms  slowly,  and 
has  to  be  clarified  by  prolonged  discus- 
sion, but  it  is  sure  to  prove  correct  even- 
tually. 

What  appears  most  to  concern  us  in  the 
tendencies  of  democratic  government  is 
not  so  much  the  quality  of  public  opin- 
ion, as  the  way  in  which  it  exercises  its 
power  over  tlie  conduct  of  afFairs.  I  was 
struck  recently  by  a  remark  in  a  private 
letter,  that  "  public  opinion  is  as  sound 
as  ever,  but  that  the  politicians  "  —  that 
is,  the  men  in  control  of  affairs  —  "  pay 
just  as  little  attention  to  it  as  ever." 
There  is  an  assumption  here  that  we  can 
get  at  public  opinion  in  some  other  way 
than  through  elections  ;  that  is,  that  we 
may  know  what  the  public  tiiinks  on  any 
particular  question,  without  paying  atten- 


tion to  what  men  in  power,  who  seek  to 
obey  the  popular  will,  do  or  say  as  a  con- 
dition of  their  political  existence.  Is  this 
true  of  any  democratic  country  ?  Is  it 
true,  in  particular,  of  the  United  States 
of  America  ? 

There  are  only  two  ways  in  which  pub- 
lic opinion  upon  political  questions  finds 
expression,  or  is  thought  to  find  it.  One 
is  the  vote  at  elections,  the  other  is  jour- 
nalism. But  public  opinion  declares  it- 
self through  elections  only  at  intervals 
of  greater  or  less  length :  in  England, 
once  in  five  or  six  years ;  in  America, 
once  in  two  years,  or  at  most  in  four  ;  in 
France,  once  in  four  years.  It  is  only  at 
these  periods  that  public  opinion  must  be 
sought ;  at  others,  it  is  consulted  at  the 
will  of  the  minister  or  sovereign,  and  he 
rarely  consults  it  when  he  can  help  it  if 
he  thinks  that  its  decision  will  be  against 
him,  and  that  the  result  will  be  a  loss  of 
power.  The  imperfection  of  elections, 
however,  as  a  means  of  making  public 
opinion  known,  is  very  obvious.  It  is 
seldom,  indeed,  that  a  definite  issue  is 
submitted  to  the  public,  like  the  Swiss 
refei-endum,  and  that  the  voters  are  asked 
to  say  yes  or  no,  in  answer  to  a  particu- 
lar question.  As  a  rule,  it  is  the  general 
policy  of  the  party  in  power,  on  all  sorts 
of  subjects,  which  appears  to  determine 
the  action  of  the  voters.  The  bulk  of 
them,  on  both  sides,  vote  for  their  own 
party  in  any  event,  no  matter  what  course 
it  has  pursued,  on  the  principle  that  if 
what  it  has  done  in  a  particular  case  is 
not  right,  it  is  as  nearly  right  as  circum- 
stances will  permit.  The  remnant,  or 
"  independents,"  who  turn  the  scale  to 
one  side  or  the  other,  have  half  a  dozen 
reasons  for  their  course,  or,  in  other 
words,  express  by  their  vote  their  opin- 
ions on  half  a  dozen  subjects,  besides 
the  one  on  which  the  verdict  of  the  ma- 
jority is  sought.  During  the  last  thirty 
years,  for  instance,  in  the  United  States, 
it  would  have  been  almost  useless  to  con- 
sult the  voters  on  any  subject  except  the 
tariff.    No  matter  what  question  might 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


3 


have  been  put  to  them,  it  would  almost 
surely  have  been  answered  with  refer- 
ence mainly  to  the  effect  of  the  answer 
on  the  tariff.  All  other  matters  would 
have  been  passed  over.  In  like  manner, 
it  has  probably  been  impossible  in  Eng- 
land, for  ten  or  twelve  years,  to  get  a  real 
expression  of  opinion  on  any  subject  ex- 
cept Irish  home  rule.  To  the  inquiry 
what  people  thought  about  the  Armenian 
massacres,  or  education,  or  liquor  regu- 
lation, the  voters  were  pretty  sure  to  an- 
swer, "  We  are  opposed  to  Irish  home 
rule."  Accordingly,  after  every  election 
there  are  disputes  as  to  what  it  means. 
The  defeated  party  seldom  acknowledges 
that  its  defeat  has  been  due  to  the  mat- 
ters on  which  the  other  side  claims  a  vic- 
tory. The  great  triumph  of  the  Conser- 
vatives in  1894  was  ascribed  by  them  to 
home  rule,  but  by  the  Liberals  to  local 
option  and  clerical  hostility  to  the  com- 
mon schools.  Similarly,  the  Republican 
defeat  in  America  in  1890  was  due,  ac- 
cording to  one  party,  to  the  excesses  of 
the  McKinley  tariff,  and,  according  to 
the  other,  to  gross  deceptions  practiced 
on  the  voters  as  to  its  probable  effect  on 
prices. 

What  are  called  "  electioneering  de- 
vices "  or  "  tricks  "  are  largely  based  on 
this  uncertainty.  That  is,  they  are  meant 
to  influence  the  voters  by  some  sort  of 
matter  irrelevant  to  the  main  issue.  This 
is  called  "  drawing  a  red  herring  across 
the  scent."  A  good  example  of  it  is  to 
be  found  in  the  practice,  which  has  pre- 
vailed during  nearly  the  whole  tariff  agi- 
tation, of  citing  the  rage,  or  disgust,  or 
misery  of  foreigners  due  to  our  legisla- 
tion, as  a  reason  for  persisting  in  it, — 
as  if  any  legislation  which  produced  this 
effect  on  foreigners  must  be  good.  But, 
obviously,  there  might  be  much  legisla- 
tion which  would  excite  the  hostility  of 
foreigners,  and  be  at  the  same  time  inju- 
rious to  this  country.  In  voting  on  the 
tariff,  a  large  number  of  voters  —  the 
Irish  for  instance  —  might  be,  and  doubt- 
less were,  influenced  in  favor  of  high  du- 


ties by  the  fact  that,  to  a  large  extent, 
they  would  exclude  British  goods,  and 
thus  they  appeared  to  be  approving  a 
protective  policy  in  general.  Nobody  be- 
lieves that  in  Germany  the  increasing 
Socialist  vote  represents  Socialist  ideas 
—  properly  so  called.  It  expresses  dis- 
content generally  with  the  existing  re- 
gime. In  Ireland,  too,  the  vote  at  a  gen- 
eral election  does  not  express  simply  an 
opinion  on  the  question  which  has  dis- 
solved Parliament.  Rather,  it  expresses 
general  hostility  to  English  rule.  In  It- 
aly elections  mostly  turn  on  the  question 
of  the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope.  In 
fact,  wherever  we  look  at  the  modes  of 
obtaining  expressions  of  public  opinion, 
we  find  that  elections  are  not  often  re- 
liable as  to  particular  measures,  except 
through  the  referendum.  In  all  demo- 
cratic countries,  it  is  the  practice  of  the 
bulk  of  the  voters  to  indicate  by  their 
votes  rather  their  confidence  in,  or  dis- 
trust of,  the  party  in  power,  than  their 
opinions  on  any  particular  measure.  It 
is  the  few  who  turn  the  scale  who  are 
really  influenced  by  the  main  question 
before  the  voters.  The  rest  follow  their 
party  prepossessions,  or  rely  on  the  party 
managers  to  turn  the  majority,  if  they 
secure  it,  to  proper  account. 

In  England  some  reliance  is  placed  on 
what  are  called  "bye  elections," — or 
elections  caused  by  vacancies  occurring 
between  two  general  elections,  —  as  in- 
dications of  the  trend  of  public  opinion 
touching  the  acts  or  policy  of  the  min- 
istry. But  these  elections  very  seldom 
show  more  than  slight  diminution  or 
slight  increase  of  preceding  majorities, 
and  the  result,  as  an  instruction,  is  very 
often  made  uncertain  by  local  causes, 
such  as  the  greater  or  less  popularity  of 
one  of  the  candidates.  They  may,  and 
generally  do,  reveal  the  growing  or  de- 
clining popularity  of  the  party  in  power 
in  the  constituency  in  which  they  occur, 
but  rarely  can  be  held  to  express  the 
opinion  of  the  majority  on  any  particu- 
lar matter.    There  are  several  ways  of 


4 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


accounting  for  any  changes  which  have 
occurred  in  the  total  vote,  all  equally 
plausible.  In  America  town  or  county 
elections  serve  somewhat  the  same  pur- 
pose. They  are  watched,  not  so  much 
with  reference  to  their  influence  on  local 
affairs,  as  with  reference  to  the  light  they 
throw  on  the  feelings  of  the  voters  to- 
ward the  administration  for  the  time  be- 
ing. It  is  taken  for  granted  that  no  local 
wants  or  incidents  will  prevent  the  bulk 
of  the  voters  from  casting  their  ballots 
as  members  of  federal  parties. 

It  is,  probably,  this  disposition  to  vote 
on  the  general  course  of  the  administra- 
tion, rather  than  on  any  particular  pro- 
posal, which  causes  what  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  call  the  "  swinging  of  the  pen- 
dulum," —  that  is,  the  tendency  both  in 
England  and  in  America  to  vote  in  a  dif- 
ferent way  at  alternate  elections,  or  never 
to  give  any  party  more  than  one  term 
in  power.  If  public  attention  were  apt 
to  be  concentrated  on  one  measure,  this 
could  hardly  occur  so  frequently.  It 
doubtless  indicates,  not  positive  condem- 
nation of  any  particular  thing,  so  much 
as  disapproval  or  weariness  of  certain 
marked  features  of  the  government  poli- 
cy. The  voters  get  tired  both  of  praise 
and  of  blame  of  particular  men,  and  so 
resolve  to  try  others ;  or  they  get  tired 
of  a  particular  policy,  and  long  for  some- 
thing new.  It  is  a  little  difficult  to  fix 
on  the  exact  cause  of  such  changes,  but  it 
seems  pretty  certain  that  they  cannot  be 
considered  definite  expressions  of  opin- 
ion on  specific  subjects.  And  then,  owing 
to  the  electoral  divisions  through  which 
every  country  chooses  legislators,  a  far 
greater  change  may  often  be  made  in  the 
legislature  than  the  vote  in  the  separate 
constituencies  warrants.  For  instance,  a 
President  may  readily  be  chosen  in  the 
United  States  by  a  minority  of  the  popu- 
lar vote  ;  and  in  England,  an  enormous 
majority  in  the  House  of  Commons  may 
rest  on  a  very  small  aggregate  majority 
of  the  electors.  There  never  was  a  more 
striking  illustration  of  the  difficulty  of 


getting  at  popular  opinion  than  the  de- 
feat of  the  Disraeli  ministry  in  1880.  It 
was  the  confident  belief  of  all  tlie  more 
instructed  portion  of  the  community  — 
the  gentry,  the  clergy,  and  the  profession- 
al class  —  that,  rightly  or  wrongly,  public 
opinion  was  on  the  side  of  the  ministry, 
and  approved  what  was  called  its  "  im- 
perial policy,"  —  the  provocation  given 
to  Afghanistan,  and  the  interference  in 
the  Russo-Turkish  War  on  the  side  of 
Turkey.  One  heard,  it  was  said,  nothing 
else  in  the  clubs,  the  trains,  the  hotels, 
and  the  colleges.  But  the  result  showed 
that  these  indications  were  of  little  value, 
that  the  judgment  of  the  classes  most  oc- 
cupied in  observing  political  tendencies 
was  at  fault,  and  that  the  bulk  of  the  con- 
stituencies had  apparently  taken  quite  a 
different  view  of  the  whole  matter. 

A  striking  example  of  the  same  thing 
was  afforded  in  the  State  of  New  York 
in  1892.  The  leaders  of  the  Democratic 
party  at  that  time  were  men  of  more  than 
usual  astuteness  and  political  experience. 
It  was  of  the  last  importance  to  them  to 
learn  the  popular  judgment  on  the  more 
recent  acts  of  the  party,  particularly  on 
the  mode  in  which  it  had  secured  control 
of  the  state  Senate.  Up  to  the  day  of 
election  they  seem  to  have  had  the  utmost 
confidence  in  an  overwhelming  popular 
verdict  in  their  favor.  The  result,  how- 
ever, was  their  ovei-whelming  defeat. 
They  apparently  had  but  a  very  slight 
knowledge  of  the  trend  of  public  opinion. 
In  truth,  it  may  be  said  that  the  great 
political  revolutions  wrought  by  elections, 
both  in  England  and  in  America,  have 
been  unexpected  by  the  bulk  of  observers, 
either  wholly  or  as  to  their  extent.  No 
change  at  all  was  looked  for,  or  it  was 
not  expected  to  be  so  great  a  change. 

Why  this  should  be  so,  why  in  a  demo- 
cratic society  people  should  find  so  much 
difficulty  in  discovering  beforehand  what 
the  sovereign  power  is  thinking,  and  what 
it  is  going  to  do,  is  not  so  difficult  to  ex- 
plain as  it  seems.  We  must  first  bear 
in  mind  that  the  democratic  societies 


T'he  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


5 


prodigiously  increased  in  size  almost  at 
the  moment  at  which  they  acquired  con- 
trol of  the  State.  There  was  no  previous 
opportunity  for  examining  their  tastes, 
prejudices,  weaknesses,  or  tendencies. 
Most  of  the  descriptions  of  democracies 
within  the  present  century,  as  I  have 
already  pointed  out,  have  been  only 
guesses,  or  deductions  from  the  history 
of  those  of  antiquity.  Nearly  every  mod- 
ern writer  on  this  subject  has  fallen  into 
mistakes  about  democratic  tendencies, 
merely  through  a  priori  reasoning.  Cer- 
tain things  had  happened  in  the  ancient 
democracies,  and  were  sure  to  happen 
again  in  the  modern  democracies,  much 
as  the  conditions  had  changed.  Singu- 
larly enough,  the  one  absolutely  new 
difficulty,  the  difficulty  of  consulting  a 
modern  democracy,  has  hardly  been  no- 
ticed. This  difficulty  has  produced  the 
boss,  who  is  a  sufficiently  simple  phenom- 
enon. But  how,  without  the  boss,  to 
get  at  what  the  people  are  thinking,  has 
not  been  found  out,  though  it  is  of  great 
importance.  We  have  not  yet  hit  on  the 
best  plan  of  getting  at  "  public  opinion." 
Elections,  as  we  have  seen,  are  the  medi- 
um through  which  this  force  manifests 
itself  in  action,  but  they  do  not  furnish 
the  reason  of  this  action,  the  considera- 
tions which  led  to  it,  or  all  the  conse- 
quences it  is  expected  to  produce.  More- 
over, at  best  they  tell  us  only  what  half 
the  people  are  thinking ;  for  no  party 
nowadays  wins  an  electoral  victory  by 
much  over  half  the  voters.  So  that  we 
are  driven  back,  for  purposes  of  obser- 
vation, on  the  newspaper  press. 

Our  confidence  in  this  is  based  on  the 
theory,  not  so  much  that  the  newspapers 
make  public  opinion,  as  that  the  opinions 
they  utter  are  those  of  which  their  read- 
ers approve.  But  this  ground  is  being 
made  less  tenable  every  year  by  the  fact 
that  more  and  more  newspapers  rely  on 
advertising,  rather  than  on  subscriptions, 
for  their  sujjport  and  profits,  and  agree- 
ment with  their  readers  is  thus  less  and 
less  important  to  them.    The  old  threat 


of  "  stopping  my  paper,"  if  a  subscriber 
came  across  unpalatable  views  in  the  edi- 
torial columns,  is  therefore  not  so  formi- 
dable as  it  used  to  be,  and  is  less  resorted 
to.  The  advertiser,  rather  than  the  sub- 
scriber, is  now  the  newspaper  bogie.  He 
is  the  person  before  whom  the  publisher 
cowers  and  whom  he  tries  to  please,  and 
the  advertiser  is  very  indifferent  about 
the  opinions  of  a  newspaper.  What  in- 
terests him  is  the  amount  or  quality  of 
its  circulation.  What  he  wants  to  know 
is,  how  many  persons  see  it,  not  how  many 
persons  agree  with  it.  The  consequence 
is  that  the  newspapers  of  largest  circu- 
lation, published  in  the  great  centres  of 
population  where  most  votes  are  cast,  are 
less  and  less  organs  of  opinion,  especially 
in  America.  In  fact,  in  some  cases  the 
advertisers  use  their  influence  —  which 
is  great,  and  which  the  increasing  com- 
petition between  newspapers  makes  all 
the  greater  —  to  prevent  the  expression 
in  newspapers  of  what  is  probably  the 
prevailing  local  view  of  men  or  events. 
There  are  not  many  newspapers  which 
can  afford  to  defy  a  large  advertiser. 

Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the  read- 
ing public  to-day,  in  our  democracy,  than 
the  increasing  incapacity  for  continuous 
attention.  The  power  of  attention  is  one 
that,  just  like  muscular  power,  needs  cul- 
tivation or  training.  The  ability  to  listen 
to  a  long  argument  or  exposition,  or  to 
read  it,  involves  not  only  strength  but 
habit  in  the  muscles  of  the  eye  and  the 
nerves  of  the  ear.  In  familiar  language, 
one  has  to  be  used  to  it,  to  do  it  easily. 

There  seems  to  be  a  great  deal  of 
reason  for  believing  that  this  habit  is 
becoming  much  rarer.  Publishers  com- 
plain more  and  more  of  the  refusal  of 
nearly  every  modern  community  to  read 
books,  except  novels,  wiiich  keep  the  at- 
tention alive  by  anmsing  incidents  and 
rapid  changes  of  situation.  Argument- 
ative works  can  rarely  count  on  a  large 
circulation.  Tliis  may  doubtless  be  as- 
cribed in  part  to  the  multiplicity  of  the  ob- 
jects of  attention  in  modern  times,  to  the 


6 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


opportunities  of  simple  amusement,  to  the 
large  area  of  the  world  which  is  brought 
under  each  man's  observation  by  the  tel- 
egraph, and  to  the  general  rapidity  of 
communication.  But  this  large  area  is 
brought  under  observation  through  the 
newspaper ;  and  that  the  newspaper's 
mode  of  presenting  facts  does  seriously 
affect  the  way  in  which  people  perform 
the  process  called  "  making  up  their 
minds,"  especially  about  public  questions, 
can  hardly  be  denied.  The  nearest  ap- 
proach we  can  make  to  what  people  are 
thinking  about  any  matter  of  public  in- 
terest is  undoubtedly  by  "  reading  the 
papers."  It  may  not  be  a  sure  way,  but 
there  is  no  other.  It  is  true,  often  lam- 
entably true,  that  the  only  idea  most 
foreigners  and  observers  get  of  a  nation's 
modes  of  thought  and  standards  of  duty 
and  excellence,  and  in  short  of  its  man- 
ners and  morals,  comes  througli  reading 
its  periodicals.  To  the  outsider  the  news- 
paper press  is  the  nation  talking  about 
itself.  Nations  are  known  to  other  na- 
tions mainly  through  their  press.  They 
used  to  be  known  more  by  their  public 
men ;  but  the  class  of  public  men  who  re- 
present a  country  is  becoming  every  day 
smaller,  and  public  men  speak  less  than 
formerly  ;  with  us  they  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  speak  at  all.  Our  present  system 
of  nomination  and  the  loss  of  the  habit 
of  debating  in  the  legislature  have  almost 
put  an  end  to  oratory,  except  during 
exciting  canvasses.  Elsewhere  than  in 
England,  the  names  of  the  leading  men 
are  hardly  known  to  foreigners  ;  their 
utterances,  not  at  all.  If  I  want  to  learn 
the  drift  of  opinion  in  any  country,  on 
any  topic,  the  best  thing  I  can  do,  there- 
fore, is  to  read  the  papers ;  and  I  must 
read  a  large  number. 

In  America  more  than  in  any  other 
countiy,  the  collection  of  "  news  "  has  be- 
come a  business  within  half  a  century, 
and  it  has  been  greatly  promoted  by  the 
improvements  in  the  printing-press.  Be- 
fore this  period,  "  news  "  was  generally 
news  of  great  events,  ^  that  is,  of  events 


of  more  than  local  importance  ;  so  that  if 
a  man  were  asked,  "  What  news  ?  "  he 
would  try,  in  his  answer,  to  mention 
something  of  world  -  wide  significance. 
But  as  soon  as  the  collection  of  it  became 
a  business,  submitted  to  the  ordinary  laws 
of  competition,  tiie  number  of  things  that 
were  called  "  news  "  naturally  increased. 
Each  newspaper  endeavored  to  outdo  its 
rivals  by  tlie  greater  number  of  facts  it 
brought  to  the  public  notice,  and  it  was 
not  very  long  before  "  news "  became 
everytliing  whatever,  no  matter  how  un- 
important, which  the  reader  had  not  pre- 
viously heard  of.  The  sense  of  propor- 
tion about  news  was  rapidly  destroyed. 
Everything,  however  trifling,  was  consid- 
ered worth  printing,  and  the  newspaper 
finally  became,  what  it  is  now,  a  collec- 
tion of  the  gossip  not  only  of  the  whole 
world,  but  of  its  own  locality.  Now, 
gossip,  when  analyzed,  consists  simply 
of  a  collection  of  actual  facts,  mostly  of 
little  moment,  and  also  of  surmises  about 
things,  of  equally  little  moment.  But 
business  requires  that  as  much  impor- 
tance as  possible  shall  be  given  to  them 
by  the  manner  of  producing  each  item, 
or  what  is  called  "  typographical  dis- 
play." Consequently  they  are  presented 
vrioh  separate  and  conspicuous  headings, 
and  there  is  no  necessary  connection  be- 
tween them.  They  follow  one  another, 
column  after  column,  without  any  order, 
either  of  subject  or  of  chronology. 

The  diligent  newspaper  reader,  there- 
fore, gets  accustomed  to  passing  rapidly 
from  one  to  another  of  a  series  of  inci- 
dents, small  and  great,  requiring  simply 
the  transfer,  from  one  trifle  to  another, 
of  a  sort  of  lazy,  uninterested  attention, 
which  often  becomes  sub-conscious  ;  that 
is,  a  man  reads  with  hardly  any  know- 
ledge or  recollection  of  what  he  is  read- 
ing. Not  only  does  the  attention  be- 
come habituated  to  frequent  breaches  in 
its  continuity,  but  it  grows  accustomed 
to  short  paragraphs,  as  one  does  to  pass- 
ers-by in  the  street.  A  man  sees  and 
observes  them,  but  does  not  remember 


The  Groioih  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


7 


what  he  sees  and  observes  for  more  than 
a  minute  or  two.  That  this  should  have 
its  effect  on  the  editorial  writing  is  what 
naturally  might  be  expected.  If  the 
editorial  article  is  long,  the  reader,  used 
to  the  short  paragraphs,  is  apt  to  shrink 
from  the  labor  of  perusing  it ;  if  it  is 
brief,  he  pays  little  more  attention  to  it 
than  he  pays  to  the  paragraphs.  When, 
thei'efore,  any  newspaper  turns  to  seri- 
ous discussion  in  its  columns,  it  is  diffi- 
cult, and  one  may  say  increasingly  diffi- 
cult, to  get  a  hearing.  It  has  to  contend 
both  against  the  intellectual  habit  of  its 
readers,  which  makes  prolonged  atten- 
tion hard,  and  against  a  priori  doubts 
of  its  honesty  and  competency.  People 
question  whether  it  is  talking  in  good 
faith,  or  has  some  sinister  object  in  view, 
knowing  that  in  one  city  of  the  Union, 
at  least,  it  is  impossible  to  get  published 
any  criticism  on  the  larger  advertisers, 
however  nefarious  their  doings ;  know- 
ing also  that  in  another  city  there  have 
been  rapid  changes  of  journalistic  views, 
made  for  party  purposes  or  through  sim- 
ple changes  of  ownership. 

The  result  is  that  the  effect  of  newspa- 
per editorial  writing  on  opinion  is  small, 
so  far  as  one  can  judge.  Still,  it  would 
be  undeniably  large  enough  to  possess 
immense  power  if  the  press  acted  unani- 
mously as  a  body.  If  all  the  papers,  or 
a  great  majority  of  them,  said  the  same 
thing  on  any  question'  of  the  day,  or  told 
the  same  story  about  any  matter  in  dis- 
pute, they  would  undoubtedly  possess 
great  influence.  But  they  are  much  di- 
vided, partly  by  political  affiliations,  and 
partly,  perhaps  mainly,  by  business  rival- 
ry. For  business  purposes,  each  is  apt 
to  think  it  necessary  to  differ  in  some 
degree  from  its  nearest  rivals,  whether 
of  the  same  party  or  not,  in  its  view  of 
any  question,  or  at  all  events  not  to  sup- 
port a  rival's  view,  or  totally  to  ignore 
something  to  which  it  is  attaching  great 
importance.  The  result  is  that  the  press 
rarely  acts  with  united  force  or  expresses 
a  united  opinion.    Nor  do  many  readers 


subscribe  to  more  than  one  paper ;  and 
consequently  few  readers  have  any  know- 
ledge of  the  other  side  of  any  question 
on  which  their  own  paper  is,  possibly, 
preaching  with  vehemence.  The  great 
importance  which  many  persons  attach  to 
having  a  newspaper  of  large  circulation 
on  their  side  is  due  in  some  degree  to  its 
power  in  the  presentation  of  facts  to  the 
public,  and  also  to  its  power  of  annoy- 
ance by  persistent  abuse  or  ridicule. 

Another  agency  which  has  interfered 
with  the  press  as  an  organ  of  opinion 
is  the  greatly  increased  expense  of  start- 
ing or  carrying  on  a  modern  newspaper. 
The  days  when  Horace  Greeley  or  Wil- 
liam Lloyd  Garrison  could  start  an  influ- 
ential paper  in  a  small  printing-office, 
with  the  assistance  of  a  boy,  are  gone 
forever.  Few  undertakings  require  more 
capital,  or  are  more  hazardous.  The  most 
serious  item  of  expense  is  the  collection 
of  news  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and 
this  cannot  be  evaded  in  our  day.  News 
is  the  life-blood  of  the  modern  newspa- 
per. No  talent  or  energy  will  make  up 
for  its  absence.  The  consequence  is  that 
a  very  large  sum  is  needed  to  establish  a 
newspaper.  After  it  is  started,  a  large 
sum  must  be  spent  without  visible  return, 
but  the  fortune  that  may  be  accumulat- 
ed by  it,  if  successful,  is  also  very  large. 
One  of  the  most  curious  things  about  it 
is  that  the  public  does  not  expect  from 
a  newspaper  proprietor  the  same  sort  of 
morality  that  it  expects  from  persons  in 
other  callings.  It  would  disown  a  book- 
seller and  cease  all  intercourse  with  him 
for  a  tithe  of  the  falsehoods  and  petty 
frauds  which  it  passes  unnoticed  in  a 
newspaper  proprietor.  It  may  disbe- 
lieve every  word  he  says,  and  yet  profess 
to  respect  him,  and  may  occasionally 
reward  him  ;  so  that  it  is  quite  possible 
to  find  a  newspaper  which  nearly  every- 
body condemns,  and  whose  influence 
most  men  would  repudiate,  circulating 
very  freely  among  religious  and  moral 
people,  and  making  handsome  profits. 
A  newspaper  proprietor,  therefore,  who 


8 


The  Growth  and  Exj)ression  of  Public  Opinion. 


linds  that  his  profits  remain  high,  no 
matter  what  views  he  promulgates  and 
what  kind  of  morality  he  practices,  can 
hardly,  with  fairness  to  the  community, 
be  treated  as  an  exponent  of  its  opinions. 
He  will  not  consider  what  it  thinks,  when 
he  finds  he  has  only  to  consider  what 
it  will  buy,  and  that  it  will  buy  his  paper 
without  agreeing  with  it. 

But  it  is  as  an  exponent  of  the  na- 
tion's feeling  about  other  nations  that 
the  press  is  most  defective.  The  old 
diplomacy,  in  which,  as  Disraeli  said, 
"  sovereigns  and  statesmen  "  regulated 
international  affairs  in  secret  conclave  in 
gorgeous  salons,  has  all  but  passed  away. 
The  "  sovereigns  and  statesmen "  and 
the  secret  conclave  and  the  gorgeous  sa- 
lons remain,  but  of  the  old  indifference 
to  what  the  world  outside  thought  of 
their  work  not  very  much  remains.  Now 
and  then  a  king  or  an  emperor  gratifies 
his  personal  spites,  in  his  instructions  to 
his  diplomatic  representatives,  like  the 
Emperor  of  Germany  in  the  case  of  the 
unfortunate  Greeks  ;  but  most  govern- 
ments, in  their  negotiations  with  foreign 
powers,  now  listen  closely  to  the  voice  of 
their  own  people.  The  democracy  sits 
at  every  council  board,  and  the  most  con- 
servative of  ministers,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, consults  it  as  well  as  he  can. 
He  tries  to  find  out  what  it  wishes  in 
any  particular  matter,  or,  if  this  be  im- 
possible, he  tries  to  find  out  what  will 
most  impress  its  imagination.  Whether 
he  brings  peace  or  war,  he  tries  to  make 
it  appear  that  the  national  honor  has  been 
carefully  looked  after,  and  that  the  na- 
tional desires,  and  even  the  national  weak- 
nesses, have  been  considered  and  provid- 
ed for.  But  it  is  from  the  press  that 
he  must  learn  all  this  ;  and  it  is  from 
the  press,  too,  that  each  diplomatist  must 
learn  whether  his  opponent's  country  is 
really  behind  him.  The  press  is  never 
silent,  and  it  has  the  field  to  itself  ;  any 
one  who  wishes  to  know  what  the  people 
are  feeling  and  thinking  has  to  rely  on 
it,  for  the  want  of  anything  better. 


In  international  questions,  however, 
the  press  is  often  a  poor  reliance.  In 
the  first  place,  business  prudence  prompts 
an  editor,  whether  he  fully  understands 
the  matter  under  discussion  or  not,  to 
take  what  seems  the  patriotic  view  ;  and 
tradition  generally  makes  the  selfish, 
quarrelsome  view  the  patriotic  view. 
The  late  editor  of  the  Sun  expressed 
this  tersely  by  advising  young  journal- 
ists "  always  to  stand  by  the  Stars  and 
Stripes."  It  was  long  ago  expressed 
still  more  tersely  by  the  cry,  "  Our 
country,  right  or  wrong !  "  All  first-class 
powers  still  live  more  or  less  openly, 
in  their  relations  with  one  another, 
under  the  old  dueling  code,  which  the 
enormous  armaments  in  modern  times 
render  almost  a  necessity.  Under  this 
code  the  one  unbearable  imputation  is 
fear  of  somebody.  Any  other  imputa- 
tion a  nation  supports  with  comparative 
meekness ;  the  charge  of  timidity  is  in- 
tolerable. It  has  been  made  more  so  by 
the  conversion  of  most  modern  nations 
into  great  standing  armies,  and  no  great 
standing  army  can  for  a  moment  allow 
the  world  to  doubt  its  readiness,  and  even 
eagerness,  to  fight.  It  is  not  every  dip- 
lomatic difference  that  is  at  first  clearly 
understood  by  the  public.  Very  often, 
the  pros  and  cons  of  the  matter  are  im- 
perfectly known  until  the  correspondence 
is  published,  but  the  agitation  of  the 
popular  mind  continues  ;  the  press  must 
talk  about  the  matter,  and  its  talk  is 
rarely  pacific.  It  is  bound  by  tradition 
to  take  the  ground  that  its  own  govern- 
ment is  right ;  and  that  even  if  it  is  not, 
it  does  not  make  any  difference,  —  the 
press  has  to  maintain  that  it  is  right. 

The  action  of  Congress  on  the  recent 
Venezuelan  complication  well  illustrated 
the  position  of  the  press  in  such  matters. 
When  Mr.  Cleveland  sent  his  message 
asking  Congress  to  vote  the  expense  of 
tracing  the  frontier  of  a  foreign  power. 
Congress  knew  nothing  of  the  merits  of 
the  case.  It  did  not  even  know  that 
any  such  controversy  was  pending.  As 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


9 


the  message  was  distinctly  one  that 
might  lead  to  war,  and  as  Congress  was 
the  war-making  power,  the  Constitution 
presumptively  imposed  on  it  the  duty  of 
examining  the  causes  of  the  dispute  thor- 
oughly, before  complying  with  the  Presi- 
dent's request.  In  most  other  affairs, 
too,  it  would  have  been  the  more  dis- 
posed to  discharge  this  duty  because  the 
majority  was  hostile  to  Mr.  Cleveland. 
But  any  delay  or  hesitation,  it  feared, 
would  be  construed  by  the  public  as  a 
symptom  of  fear  or  of  want  of  patriot- 
ism, so  it  instantly  voted  the  money  with- 
out any  examination  whatever.  The 
press  was  in  an  almost  similar  condition. 
It  knew  no  more  of  the  merits  of  the  case 
than  Congress,  and  it  had  the  same  fear 
of  being  thought  wanting  in  patriotism, 
so  that  the  whole  country  in  twenty-four 
hours  resounded  with  rhetorical  prepa- 
ration for  and  justification  of  war  with 
England. 

As  long  as  this  support  is  confined  to 
argumentation  no  great  harm  is  done. 
The  diplomatists  generally  care  but  little 
about  the  dialectical  backing  up  that  they 
get  from  the  newspapers.  Either  they 
do  not  need  it,  or  it  is  too  ill  informed 
to  do  them  much  good.  But  the  news- 
papers have  another  concern  than  mere 
victory  in  argument.  They  have  to  main- 
tain their  place  in  the  estimation  of  their 
readers,  and,  if  possible,  to  increase  the 
number  of  these  readers.  Unhappily,  in 
times  of  international  trouble,  the  easiest 
way  to  do  this  always  seems  to  be  to  in- 
fluence the  public  mind  against  the  for- 
eigner. This  is  done  partly  by  impugn- 
ing his  motives  in  the  matter  in  hand, 
and  partly  by  painting  his  general  char- 
acter in  an  odious  light.  Undoubtedly 
this  produces  some  effect  on  the  public 
mind  by  begetting  a  readiness  to  pun- 
ish in  arms,  at  any  cost,  so  unworthy  an 
adversary.  The  worst  effect,  however, 
is  that  which  is  produced  on  the  ministers 
conducting  the  negotiations.  It  fright- 
ens or  encourages  them  into  taking  ex- 
treme positions,  in  putting  forward  im- 


possible claims,  or  in  perverting  history 
and  law  to  help  their  case.  The  applause 
and  support  of  the  newspapers  seem  to 
be  public  opinion.  They  umst  bring  hon- 
or at  home,  no  matter  how  the  controver- 
sy ends.  In  short,  it  may  be  said,  as  a 
matter  of  history,  that  in  few  diplomatic 
controversies  in  this  century  has  the  press 
failed  to  make  moderate  ground  difficult 
for  a  diplomatist,  and  retreats  from  un- 
tenable positions  almost  impossible.  The 
press  makes  his  case  seem  so  good  that 
abandonment  of  it  looks  like  treason  to 
his  country. 

Then  there  is  another  aspect  of  the  case 
which  cannot  be  passed  without  notice, 
though  it  puts  the  press  in  a  less  honor- 
able light.  Newspapers  are  made  to  sell ; 
and  for  this  purpose  there  is  nothing  bet- 
ter than  war.  War  means  daily  sensation 
and  excitement.  On  this  almost  any  kind 
of  newspaper  may  live  and  make  money. 
Whether  the  war  brings  victory  or  defeat 
makes  little  difference.  The  important 
thing  is  that  in  war  every  moment  may 
bring  important  and  exciting  news,  — 
news  which  does  not  need  to  be  accurate 
or  to  bear  sifting.  What  makes  it  most 
marketable  is  that  it  is  probable  and 
agreeable,  although  disagreeable  news 
sells  nearly  as  well.  In  the  tumult  of  a 
great  war,  when  the  rules  of  evidence 
are  suspended  by  passion  or  anxiety,  in- 
vention, too,  is  easy,  and  has  its  value, 
and  is  pretty  sure  never  to  be  punished. 
Some  newspapers,  which  found  it  difficult 
to  make  a  livelihood  in  times  of  peace, 
made  fortunes  in  our  last  war ;  and  it  may 
be  said  that,  as  a  rule,  troublous  times 
are  the  best  for  a  newspaper  proprietor. 

It  follows  from  this,  it  cannot  but  fol- 
low,  that  it  is  o«ly  human  for  a  newspa- 
per proprietor  to  desire  war,  especially 
when  he  feels  sure  that  his  own  country 
is  right,  and  that  its  op2)onents  are  ene- 
mies of  civilization,  —  a  state  of  mind 
into  which  a  man  may  easily  work  him- 
self by  writing  and  talking  much  during 
an  international  controversy.  So  that  I 
do  not  think  it  an  exaggeration  or  a 


10 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Puhlic  Opinion. 


calumny  to  say  that  the  press,  taken  as  a 
whole,  —  of  course  with  many  honorable 
exceptions,  —  has  a  bias  in  favor  of  war. 
I'li  would  not  stir  up  a  war  with  any  coun- 
try, but  if  it  sees  preparations  made  to 
fight,  it  does  not  fail  to  encourage  the 
combatants.  This  is  particularly  true  of 
a  naval  war,  which  is  much  more  striking 
as  a  spectacle  than  a  land  war,  while  it 
does  not  disturb  industry  or  distribute 
personal  risk  to  nearly  the  same  extent. 

Of  much  more  importance,  however, 
than  the  manner  in  which  public  opinion 
finds  expression  in  a  democracy  is  the 
manner  in  which  it  is  formed,  and  this 
is  very  much  harder  to  get  at.  I  do  not 
mean  what  may  be  called  people's  stand- 
ing opinion  about  things  in  general,  which 
is  born  of  hereditary  prejudice  and  works 
itself  into  the  manners  of  the  country  as 
part  of  each  individual's  moral  and  in- 
tellectual outfit.  There  is  a  whole  batch 
of  notions  about  things  public  and  pri- 
vate, which  men  of  every  nation  hold  be- 
cause they  are  national,  —  called  "Ro- 
man "  by  a  Roman,  "  English  "  by  an 
Englishman,  and  "  American  "  by  an 
American,  —  and  which  are  defended  or 
propagated  simply  by  calling  the  oppo- 
site "  un-English  "  or  "  un-American." 
These  views  come  to  people  by  descent. 
They  are  inherited  rather  than  formed. 
What  I  have  in  mind  is  the  opinions 
formed  by  the  community  about  new  sub- 
jects, questions  of  legislation  and  of  war 
and  peace,  and  about  social  needs  or  sins 
or  excesses,  —  in  short,  about  anything 
novel  which  calls  imperatively  for  an  im- 
mediate judgment  of  some  kind.  What 
is  it  that  moves  large  bodies  or  parties 
in  a  democracy  like  ours,  for  instance,  to 
say  that  its  government  should  do  this, 
or  should  not  do  that,  in  any  matter  that 
may  happen  to  be  before  them  ? 

Nothing  can  be  more  difficult  than 
an  answer  to  this  question.  Every  wri- 
ter about  democi'acy,  from  Montesquieu 
down,  has  tried  to  answer  it  by  a  priori 
predictions  as  to  what  democracy  will 
say  or  do  or  think  under  certain  given 


circumstances.  The  uniform  failure  nat- 
urally suggests  the  conclusion  that  the 
question  is  not  answerable  at  all,  owing 
largely  to  the  enormously  increased  num- 
ber of  influences  under  which  all  men 
act  in  the  modern  world.  It  is  now  very 
rare  to  meet  with  one  of  the  distinctly 
defined  characters  which  education,  con- 
ducted under  the  regime  of  authority, 
used  to  form,  down  to  the  close  of  the  last 
century.  There  are  really  no  more  "  di- 
vines," or  "  gentlemen,"  or  "  Puritans," 
or  "  John  Bulls,"  or  "  Brother  Jona- 
thans." In  other  words,  there  are  no 
more  moral  or  intellectual  moulds.  It 
used  to  be  easy  to  say  how  a  given  in- 
dividual or  community  would  look  at  a 
thing ;  at  present  it  is  well-nigh  impos- 
sible. We  can  hardly  tell  what  agency 
is  exercising  the  strongest  influence  on 
popular  thought  on  any  given  occasion. 
Most  localities  and  classes  are  subject  to 
some  peculiar  dominating  force,  and  if 
you  discover  what  it  is,  you  discover  it 
almost  by  accident.  One  of  the  latest 
attempts  to  define  a  moral  force  that 
would  be  sure  to  act  on  opinion  was  the 
introduction  into  the  political  arena  in 
England  of  the  "  Nonconformist  con- 
science," or  the  moral  training  of  the  dis- 
senting denominations,  —  Congregation- 
alists,  Methodists,  and  Baptists.  In  the 
discussions  of  Irish  home  rule  and  vari- 
ous cognate  matters,  much  use  has  been 
made  of  the  term,  but  it  is  difficult  to 
point  to  any  particular  occasion  in  which 
the  thing  has  distinctly  made  itself  felt. 
One  would  have  said,  twenty  years  ago, 
that  the  English  class  of  country  squires 
would  be  the  last  body  in  the  world, 
owing  to  temperament  and  training,  to 
approve  of  any  change  in  the  Enghsh 
currency.  We  believe  they  are  to-day 
largely  bimetallists.  The  reason  is  that 
their  present  liabilities,  contracted  in  good 
times,  have  been  made  increasingly  heavy 
by  the  fall  in  agricultural  produce. 

The  same  phenomena  are  visible  here 
in  America.  It  would  be  difficult  to-day 
to  say  what  is  the  American  opinion,  pro- 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion.  11 


perly  so  called,  about  the  marriage  bond. 
One  would  think  that  in  the  older  States, 
in  which  social  life  is  more  settled,  it 
would  strongly  favor  indissolubility,  or, 
at  all  events,  great  difficulty  of  dissolu- 
tion. But  this  is  not  the  case.  In  Con- 
necticut and  Rhode  Island  divorce  is  as 
easy,  and  almost  as  little  disreputable,  as 
in  any  of  the  newer  Western  States.  In 
the  discussion  on  the  currency,  most  ob- 
servers would  have  predicted  that  the 
power  of  the  government  over  its  value 
would  be  most  eagerly  preached  by  the 
States  in  which  the  number  of  foreign 
voters  was  greatest.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
these  States  proved  at  the  election  to  be 
the  firmest  friends  of  the  gold  standard. 
Within  our  own  lifetime  the  Southern  or 
cotton  States,  from  being  very  conserva- 
tive, have  become  very  radical,  in  the 
sense  of  being  ready  to  give  ear  to  new 
ideas.  What  we  might  have  said  of  them 
in  1860  would  be  singularly  untrue  in 
1900.  One  might  go  over  the  civilized 
world  in  this  way,  and  find  that  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  each  country,  on  any  given 
topic,  had  escaped  from  the  philosophers, 
so  to  speak,  —  that  all  generalizing  about 
it  had  become  difficult,  and  that  it  was  no 
longer  possible  to  divide  influences  into 
categories. 

The  conclusion  most  readily  reached 
about  the  whole  matter  is  that  authority, 
whether  in  religion  or  in  morals,  which 
down  to  the  last  century  was  so  power- 
ful, has  ceased  to  exert  much  influence 
on  the  affairs  of  the  modern  world,  and 
that  any  attempt  to  mould  opinion  on  re- 
ligious or  moral  or  political  questions,  by 
its  instrumentality,  is  almost  certain  to 
prove  futile.  The  reliance  of  the  older 
political  winters,  from  Grotius  to  Locke, 
on  the  sayings  of  other  previous  writers 
or  on  the  Bible,  is  now  among  the  curi- 
osities of  literature.  Utilitarianism,  how- 
ever we  may  feel  about  it,  has  fuUy  taken 
possession  of  political  discussion.  That 
is  to  say,  any  writer  or  speaker  on  po- 
litical subjects  has  to  show  that  his  pro- 
position will  make  people  more  comfort- 


able or  richer.  This  is  tantamount  to 
saying  that  historic  experience  has  not 
nearly  the  influence  on  political  affairs  it 
once  had.  The  reason  is  obvious.  The 
number  of  persons  who  have  something 
to  say  about  political  affairs  has  increased 
a  thousandfold,  but  the  practicfe  of  read- 
ing books  has  not  increased,  and  it  is  in 
books  that  experience  is  recorded.  In 
the  past,  the  governing  class,  in  part  at 
least,  was  a  reading  class.  One  of  the 
reasons  which  are  generally  said  to  have 
given  the  Southern  members  special  in- 
fluence in  Congress  before  the  war  is  that 
they  read  books,  had  libraries,  and  had 
wide  knowledge  of  the  experiments  tried 
by  earlier  generations  of  mankind.  Their 
successors  rarely  read  anything  but  the 
newspapers.  This  is  increasingly  true, 
also,  of  other  democratic  countries.  The 
old  literary  type  of  statesmen,  of  which 
Jefferson  and  Madison  and  Hamilton, 
Guizot  and  Thiers,  were  examples,  is  rap- 
idly disappearing,  if  it  has  not  already 
disappeared. 

The  importance  of  this  in  certain 
branches  of  public  affairs  is  great.  —  the 
management  of  currency,  for  example. 
All  we  know  about  currency  we  learn 
from  the  experience  of  the  human  race. 
What  man  will  do  about  any  kind  of 
money.  — gold,  silver,  or  paper,  —  under 
any  given  set  of  conditions,  we  can  pre- 
dict only  by  reading  of  what  man  has 
done.  What  will  happen  if,  of  two  kinds 
of  currency,  we  lower  or  raise  the  value 
of  one,  what  will  happen  if  we  issue 
too  much  irredeemable  paper,  why  we 
must  make  our  paper  redeemable,  what 
are  the  dangers  of  violent  and  sudden 
changes  in  the  standard  of  value,  are  all 
things  which  we  can  ascertain  only  from 
the  history  of  money.  What  any  man 
now  thinks  or  desires  about  the  matter 
is  of  little  consequence  compared  with 
what  men  in  times  past  have  tried  to  do. 
The  loss  of  influence  or  weight  by  the 
reading  class  is  therefore  of  great  im- 
portance, for  to  this  loss  we  undoubtedly 
owe  most  of  the  prevalent  wild  theories 


12  The  Growth  and  Exprt 

about  currency.  They  are  the  theories 
of  men  who  do  not  know  that  their  ex- 
periments have  been  tried  already  and 
have  failed.  In  fact,  I  may  almost  ven- 
ture the  assertion  that  the  influence  of 
history  on  politics  was  never  smaller 
than  it  is  to-day,  although  history  was 
never  before  cultivated  with  so  much 
acumen  and  industry.  So  that  authority 
and  experience  may  fairly  be  ruled  out 
of  the  list  of  forces  which  seriously 
influence  the  government  of  democratic 
societies.  In  the  formation  of  public 
opinion  they  do  not  greatly  count. 

The  effect  of  all  this  is  not  simply  to 
lead  to  hasty  legislation.  It  also  has  an 
injurious  effect  on  legislative  decision,  in 
making  every  question  seem  an  "  open  " 
or  "  large  "  question.  As  nothing,  or 
next  to  nothing,  is  settled,  all  problems 
of  politics  have  a  tendency  to  seem  new 
to  every  voter,  —  matters  of  which  each 
man  is  as  good  a  judge  as  another,  and 
as  much  entitled  to  his  own  opinion  ;  he 
is  likely  to  consider  himself  under  no 
special  obligation  to  agree  with  anybody 
else.  The  only  obligation  he  feels  is  that 
of  party,  and  this  is  imposed  to  secure 
victories  at  the  polls  rather  than  to  in- 
sure any  particular  kind  of  legislation. 
For  instance,  a  man  may  be  a  civil  ser- 
vice reformer  when  the  party  takes  no 
action  about  it,  or  a  gold  man  when 
the  party  rather  favors  silver,  or  a  free- 
trader when  the  party  advocates  high 
tariff,  and  yet  be  a  good  party  man  as 
long  as  he  votes  the  ticket.  He  may 
question  all  the  opinions  in  its  platform, 
but  if  he  thinks  it  is  the  best  party  to 
administer  the  government  or  distribute 
the  offices,  he  may  and  does  remain  in 
it  with  perfect  comfort.  In  short,  party 
discipline  does  not  insure  uniformity  of 
opinion,  but  simply  uniformity  of  action 
at  election.  The  platform  is  not  held  to 
impose  any  line  of  action  on  the  voters. 
Neither  party  in  America  to-day  has  any 
fixed  creed.  Every  voter  believes  what 
is  good  in  his  own  eyes,  and  may  do 
so  with  impunity,  without  loss  of  party 


non  of  Puhlic  Opinion. 

standing,  as  long  as  he  votes  for  the  pai"- 
ty  nominee  at  every  important  election. 

The  pursuit  of  any  policy  in  legisla- 
tion is  thus,  undoubtedly,  more  difficult 
than  of  old.  The  phrase,  well  known  to 
lawyers,  that  a  thing  is  "  against  public 
policy  "  has  by  no  means  the  same  mean- 
ing now  that  it  once  had,  for  it  is  very 
difficult  to  say  what  "  public  policy  "  is. 
National  policy  is  something  which  has 
to  be  committed  to  the  custody  of  a  few 
men  who  respect  tradition  and  are  fa- 
miliar with  recoi'ds.  A  large  assembly 
which  is  not  dominated  by  a  leader,  and 
in  which  each  member  thinks  he  knows 
as  much  as  any  other  member,  and  does 
not  study  or  respect  records,  can  hardly 
follow  a  policy  without  a  good  deal  of  dif- 
ficulty. The  disappearance  from  the  gov- 
ernments of  the  United  States,  France, 
and  Italy  of  commanding  figures,  whose 
authority  or  character  imposed  on  minor 
men,  accordingly  makes  it  hard  to  say 
what  is  the  policy  of  these  three  coun- 
tries on  most  questions.  Ministers  who 
do  not  carry  personal  weight  always  seek 
to  fortify  themselves  by  the  conciliation 
of  voters,  and  what  will  conciliate  voters 
is,  under  every  democratic  regime,  a  mat- 
ter of  increasing  uncertainty,  so  free  is 
the  play  of  individual  oj)inion. 

Of  this,  again,  the  condition  of  our  cur- 
rency question  at  this  moment  is  a  good 
illustration.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  the 
custody  and  regulation  of  the  standard 
of  value,  like  the  custody  and  regulation 
of  the  standard  of  length  or  of  weight, 
were  confided  to  experts,  without  objec- 
tion in  any  quarter.  There  was  no  more 
thought  of  disputing  with  these  experts 
about  it  than  of  disputing  with  mathe- 
maticians or  astronomers  about  problems 
in  their  respective  sciences.  It  was  not 
thought  that  there  could  be  a  "  public 
opinion  "  about  the  comparative  merits  of 
the  metals  as  mediums  of  exchange,  any 
more  than  about  the  qualities  of  triangles 
or  the  position  of  stars.  The  experts  met 
now  and  then,  in  private  conclave,  and 
decided,  without  criticism  from  any  one 


The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion.  13 


else,  whether  silver  or  gold  should  be  the 
legal  tender.  All  the  public  asked  was 
that  the  standard,  whatever  it  was,  should 
be  the  steadiest  possible,  the  least  liable 
to  fluctuations  or  variations. 

With  the  growing  strength  of  the  de- 
mocratic regime  all  this  has  been  changed. 
The  standard  of  value,  like  nearly  every- 
thing else  about  which  men  are  con- 
cerned, has  descended  into  the  political 
arena.  Every  man  claims  the  right  to 
have  an  opinion  about  it,  as  good  as  that 
of  any  other  man.  More  than  this, 
nearly  every  man  is  eager  to  get  this 
opinion  embodied  in  legislation  if  he 
can.  Nobody  is  listened  to  by  all  as  an 
authority  on  the  subject.  The  most  emi- 
nent financiers  find  their  views  exposed 
to  nearly  as  much  question  as  those  of 
any  tyro.  The  idea  that  money  should 
be  a  standard  of  value,  as  good  as  the 
nature  of  value  will  permit,  has  almost 
disappeared.  Money  has  become  a  means 
in  the  hands  of  governments  of  alleviat- 
ing human  misery,  of  lightening  the 
burdens  of  unfoi-tunate  debtors,  and  of 
stimulating  industry.  On  the  best  mode 
of  doing  these  things,  every  man  thinks 
he  is  entitled  to  his  say.  The  result  is 
that  we  find  ourselves,  in  the  presence 
of  one  of  the  most  serious  financial  pro- 
blems which  has  ever  confronted  any  na- 
tion, without  a  financial  leader.  The 
finances  of  the  Revolution  had  Alexan- 
der Hamilton,  and  subsequently  Albert 
Gallatin.  The  finances  of  the  civil  war 
had  first  Secretary  Chase,  and  subse- 
quently Senator  Sherman,  both  of  whom 
brought  us  to  some  sort  of  conclusion,  if 
not  always  to  the  right  conclusion,  by 
sheer  weight  of  authority.  To  Senator 
Sherman  we  were  mainly  indebted  for 
the  return  to  specie  payment  in  1879. 
At  present  we  have  no  one  who  fills  the 
places  of  these  men  in  the  public  eye. 
No  one  assumes  to  lead  in  this  crisis, 
though  many  give  good  as  well  as  bad 
advice,  but  all,  or  nearly  all,  who  advise, 
advise  as  politicians,  not  as  financiers. 
Very  few  who  speak  on  the  subject  say 


publicly  the  things  they  say  in  private. 
Their  public  deliverances  are  modified 
or  toned  down  to  suit  some  part  of  the 
country,  or  some  set  or  division  of  vot- 
ers. They  are  what  is  called  "  politically 
wise."  During  the  twenty  years  follow- 
ing the  change  in  the  currency  in  1873 
no  leading  man  in  either  party  disputed 
the  assertions  of  the  advocates  of  silver 
as  to  the  superiority  of  silver  to  gold  as 
a  standard  of  value.  Nearly  all  politi- 
cians, even  of  the  Republican  party,  ad- 
mitted the  force  of  some  of  the  conten- 
tious of  those  advocates,  and  were  willing 
to  meet  them  halfway  by  some  such  mea- 
sure as  the  purchase  of  silver  under  the 
Sherman  Act.  The  result  was  that  when 
Mr.  Bryan  was  nominated  on  a  silver 
platform,  his  followers  attacked  the  gold 
standard  with  weapons  drawn  from  the 
armory  of  the  gold  men,  and  nearly  every 
public  man  of  prominence  was  estopped 
from  vigorous  opposition  to  them  by  his 
own  utterances  on  the  same  subject. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  under  circum- 
stances like  these  a  policy  about  finance 
—  the  most  important  matter  in  which  a 
nation  can  have  a  policy  —  is  hardly  pos- 
sible. There  are  too  many  opinions  in 
the  field  for  the  formation  of  anything 
that  can  be  called  public  opinion.  And 
yet,  I  cannot  recall  any  case  in  history, 
or,  in  other  words,  in  human  experience, 
in  which  a  gi-eat  scheme  of  financial  re- 
form was  carried  through  without  having 
some  man  of  force  or  weight  behind  it, 
some  man  who  had  framed  it,  who  un- 
derstood it,  who  could  answer  objections 
to  it,  and  who  was  not  obliged  to  alter 
or  curtail  it  against  his  better  judgment. 
The  great  financiers  stand  out  in  bold 
relief  in  the  financial  chronicles  of  every 
nation.  They  may  have  been  wrong, 
they  may  have  made  mistakes,  but  they 
spoke  imperiously  and  carried  their  point, 
whatever  it  was. 

Whether  the  disposition  to  do  without 
them,  and  to  control  money  through  popu- 
lar opinion,  which  seems  now  to  have 
taken  possession  of  the  democratic  world, 


14  The  Growth  and  Expression  of  Public  Opinion. 


will  last,  or  whether  it  will  be  abandoned 
after  trial,  remains  to  be  seen.  But  one 
is  not  a  rash  prophet  who  predicts  that  it 
will  fail.  Finance  is  too  fuU  of  details, 
of  unforeseen  effects,  of  technical  condi- 
tions, to  make  the  mastery  of  it  possible, 
without  much  study  and  exi^erience. 
There  is  no  problem  of  government 
which  comes  so  near  being  strictly  "  sci- 
entific," that  is,  so  dependent  on  prin- 
ciples of  human  nature  and  so  little 
dependent  on  legislative  power.  No  gov- 
ernment can  completely  control  the  me- 
dium of  exchange.  It  is  a  subject  for 
psychology  rather  than  for  politics.  De- 
mocracy has  apparently  been  taken  pos- 
session of  by  the  idea,  either  that  a 
perfect  standard  of  value  may  be  con- 
trived, or  that  the  standard  of  value 
may  be  made  a  philanthropic  instrument. 
But  in  view  of  the  incessant  and  rapid 
change  of  cost  of  production  which  every- 
thing undergoes  in  this  age  of  invention 
and  discovery,  gold  and  silver  included, 
the  idea  of  a  perfect  standard  of  value 
must  be  set  down  as  a  chimera.  Every 
one  acknowledges  this.  What  some  men 
maintain  is  that  the  effects  of  invention 
and  discovery  may  be  counteracted  by 
law  and  even  by  treaty,  which  is  simply 
an  assertion  that  parliaments  and  con- 
gresses and  diplomatists  can  determine 
what  each  man  shall  give  for  everything 
he  buys.  This  proposition  hardly  needs 
more  than  a  statement  of  it  for  its  refuta- 
tion. It  is  probably  the  most  unexpected 
of  all  the  manifestations  of  democratic 
feeling  yet  produced.  For  behind  all 
proposals  to  give  currency  a  legal  value 
differing  from  the  value  of  the  market- 
place lies  a  belief  in  the  strength  of  law 
such  as  the  world  has  never  yet  seen. 
All  previous  regimes  have  believed  in  the 
power  of  law  to  enforce  physical  obedi- 
ence, and  to  say  what  shall  constitute  the 
legal  payment  of  a  debt,  but  never  until 
now  has  it  been  maintained  that  govern- 
ment can  create  in  each  head  the  amount 
of  desire  which  fixes  the  price  of  a  com- 
modity. 


In  short,  the  one  thing  which  can  be 
said  with  most  certainty  about  demo- 
cratic public  opinion  in  the  modern 
world,  is  that  it  is  moulded  as  never  be- 
fore by  economic  rather  than  by  reli- 
gious or  moral  or  political  considera- 
tions. The  influences  which  governed 
the  world  down  to  the  close  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  were  respect  for  a  reign- 
ing family,  or  belief  in  a  certain  form 
of  religious  worship  and  horror  of  oth- 
ers, or  national  pride  and  correspond- 
ing dislike  or  distrust  of  foreigners,  or 
commercial  rivalry.  It  is  only  the  last 
which  has  now  much  influence  on  public 
opinion  or  in  legislation.  There  is  not 
much  respect,  that  can  be  called  a  politi- 
cal force,  left  for  any  reigning  family. 
There  is  a  general  indifference  to  all 
forms  of  religious  worship,  or  at  least 
sufficient  indifference  to  ])revent  strong 
or  combative  attachment  to  them.  Re- 
ligious wars  are  no  longer  possible  ;  the 
desire  to  spread  any  form  of  faith  by 
force  of  arms,  which  so  powerfully  in- 
fluenced the  politics  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  has  completely 
disappeared.  It  is  only  in  Spain  and  in 
Turkey  that  this  feeling  can  now  be  said 
to  exist  as  a  power  in  the  state. 

The  growth  of  indifference  to  what 
used  to  be  called  political  liberty,  too, 
has  been  curiously  rapid.  Political  lib- 
erty, as  the  terra  was  understood  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  was  the  power 
of  having  something  to  say  in  the  election 
of  all  officers  of  the  state,  and  through 
them  of  influencing  legislation  and  ad- 
ministration ;  or,  in  other  words,  of  en- 
forcing strict  responsibility  for  its  acts 
on  the  part  of  the  governing  body  to- 
wards the  people.  There  is  apparently 
much  less  importance  attached  to  this 
now  than  formerly,  as  is  shown  by  the 
surrender  of  the  power  of  nomination  to 
"  the  bosses  "  in  so  many  States ;  and 
in  New  York  by  the  growing  readiness 
to  pass  legislation  without  debate  under 
direction  from  the  outside.  Similarly, 
socialism,  which  seems  to  be  the  political 


The  Wild  Parks  and  Forest  Reservations  of  the  West.  15 


creed  which  has  strongest  hold  on  the 
working  classes  to-day,  is  essentially  a 
form  of  domination  over  the  whole  in- 
dividual by  the  constituted  authorities, 
without  consulting  him.  The  only  choice 
left  him  is  one  of  an  occupation,  and  of 
the  kind  of  food  he  will  eat  and  the 
kind  of  clothes  he  will  wear.  As  there 
is  to  be  no  war,  no  money,  no  idleness, 
and  no  taxation,  there  will  be  no  poli- 
tics, and  consequently  no  discussion. 
In  truth,  the  number  of  men  who  would 
hail  such  a  form  of  society  with  delight, 
as  relieving  them  from  all  anxiety  about 
sustenance,  and  from  all  need  of  skill  or 
character,  is  probably  large  and  increas- 
ing. For  similar  reasons,  the  legisla- 
tion which  excites  most  attention  is  apt 
to  be  legislation  which  in  some  way 
promises  an  increase  of  physical  com- 
fort. It  is  rarely,  for  instance,  that  a 
trades  union  or  workingman's  associa- 
tion shows  much  interest  in  any  law 
except  one  which  promises  to  increase 
wages,  or  shorten  hours  of  labor,  or 
lower  fares  or  the  price  of  something. 
Protection,  to  which  a  very  large  num- 
ber of  workingmen  are  attached,  is  only 
in  their  eyes  a  mode  of  keeping  wages  up. 
"  Municipal  ownership  "  is  another  name 
for  low  fares  ;  restrictions  on  immigra- 
tion are  a  mode  of  keeping  competitors 
out  of  the  labor  market. 

All  these  things,  and  things  of  a  sim- 


ilar nature,  attract  a  great  deal  of  in- 
terest ;  the  encroachments  of  the  bosses 
on  constitutional  government,  compara- 
tively little.  The  first  attempt  to  legis- 
late for  the  economical  benefit  of  the 
masses  was  the  abolition  of  the  English 
corn  laws.  It  may  seem  at  first  sight 
that  the  enactment  of  the  corn  laws  was 
an  economical  measure.  But  such  was 
not  the  character  in  which  the  corn  laws 
were  originally  advocated.  They  were 
called  for,  first,  in  order  to  make  Eng- 
land self-supporting  in  case  of  a  war  with 
foreign  powers,  a  contingency  which  was 
constantly  present  to  men's  minds  in  the 
last  century ;  secondly,  to  keep  up  the 
country  gentry,  or  "  landed  interest,"  as 
it  was  called,  which  then  had  great  po- 
litical value  and  importance.  The  aboli- 
tion of  these  laws  was  avowedly  carried 
out  simply  for  the  purpose  of  cheapen- 
ing and  enlarging  the  loaf.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  a  series  of  measures  in  va- 
rious countries  which  aim  merely  at  in- 
creasing human  physical  comfort,  what- 
ever their  effect  on  the  structure  of  the 
government  or  on  the  play  of  politi- 
cal institutions.  This  foreshadowed  the 
greatest  change  which  has  come  over  the 
modern  world.  It  is  now  governed 
mainly  by  ideas  about  the  distribution 
of  commodities.  This  distribution  is  not 
only  what  most  occupies  public  opinion, 
but  what  has  most  to  do  with  forming  it. 

E.  L.  Godkin. 


THE  WILD  PARKS  AND  FOREST  RESERVATIONS  OF  THE  WEST. 


"  Keep  not~  standing  fix'd  and  rooted, 

Briskly  venture,  briskly  roam  ; 
Head  and  hand,  where'er  thou  foot  it, 

And  stout  heart  are  still  at  home. 
In  each  land  the  sun  does  visit 

We  are  gay,  whate'er  betide : 
To  give  room  for  wandering  is  it 

That  the  world  was  made  so  wide." 

The  tendency  nowadays  to  wander  in 
wildernesses  is  delightful  to  see.  Thou- 


sands of  tired,  nerve-shaken,  over-civi- 
lized people  are  beginning  to  find  out  that 
going  to  the  mountains  is  going  home ; 
that  wildness  is  a  necessity  ;  and  that 
mountain  parks  and  reservations  are 
useful  not  only  as  fountains  of  timber 
and  irrigating  rivers,  but  as  fountains  of 
life.  Awakening  from  the  stupefying 
effects  of  the  vice  of  over-industry  and 


16       The  Wild  Parks  and  Forest  Reservations  of  the  West. 


the  deadly  apathy  of  luxury,  they  are 
tiying  as  hest  they  can  to  mix  and  en- 
rich their  own  little  ongoings  with  those 
of  Nature,  and  to  get  rid  of  rust  and  dis- 
ease. Briskly  venturing  and  roaming, 
some  are  washing  off  sins  and  cobweb 
cares  of  the  devil's  spinning  in  all-day 
storms  on  mountains ;  sauntering  in  i-os- 
iny  pinewoods  or  in  gentian  meadows, 
brushing  through  chaparral,  bending 
down  and  parting  sweet,  flowery  sprays  ; 
tracing  rivers  to  their  sources,  getting  in 
touch  with  the  nerves  of  Mother  Earth  ; 
jumping  from  rock  to  rock,  feeling  the 
life  of  them,  learning  the  songs  of  them, 
panting  in  whole-souled  exercise  and  re- 
joicing in  deep,  long-drawn  breaths  of 
pure  wildness.  This  is  fine  and  natural 
and  full  of  promise.  And  so  also  is  the 
growing  interest  in  the  care  and  preser- 
vation of  forests  and  wild  places  in  gen- 
eral, and  in  the  half-wild  parks  and  gar- 
dens of  towns.  Even  the  scenery  habit 
in  its  most  artificial  forms,  mixed  with 
spectacles,  silliness,  and  kodaks ;  its  de- 
votees arrayed  more  gorgeously  than 
scarlet  tanagers,  frightening  the  wild 
game  with  red  umbrellas,  —  even  this 
is  encouraging,  and  may  well  be  regard- 
ed as  a  hopeful  sign  of  the  times. 

All  the  Western  mountains  are  still 
rich  in  wildness,  and  by  means  of  good 
roads  are  being  brought  nearer  civiliza- 
tion every  year.  To  the  sane  and  free 
it  will  hardly  seem  necessary  to  cross  the 
continent  in  search  of  wild  beauty,  how- 
ever easy  the  way,  for  they  find  it  in 
abundance  wherever  they  chance  to  be. 
Like  Thoreau  they  see  forests  in  orchards 
and  patches  of  huckleberry  brush,  and 
oceans  in  ponds  and  drops  of  dew.  Few 
in  these  hot,  dim,  frictiony  times  are 
quite  sane  or  free  ;  choked  with  care 
like  clocks  full  of  dust,  laboriously  do- 
ing so  much  good  and  making  so  much 
money,  —  or  so  little,  —  they  are  no 
longer  good  themselves. 

When,  like  a  merchant  taking  a  list  of 
his  goods,  we  take  stock  of  our  wildness, 
we  are  glad  to  see  how  much  of  even 


the  most  destructible  kind  is  still  un- 
spoiled. Looking  at  our  continent  as 
scenery  when  it  was  all  wild,  lying  be- 
tween beautiful  seas,  the  starry  sky 
above  it,  the  starry  rocks  beneath  it,  to 
compare  its  sides,  the  East  and  the  West, 
would  be  like  comparing  the  sides  of  a 
rainbow.  But  it  is  no  longer  equally 
beautiful.  The  rainbows  of  to-day  are, 
I  suppose,  as  bright  as  those  that  first 
spanned  the  sky  ;  and  some  of  our  land- 
scapes are  growing  more  beautiful  from 
year  to  year,  notwithstanding  the  clear- 
ing, trampling  work  of  civilization.  New 
plants  and  animals  are  enriching  woods 
and  gardens,  and  many  landscapes  wholly 
new,  with  divine  sculpture  and  architec- 
ture, are  just  now  coming  to  the  light  of 
day  as  the  mantling  folds  of  creative  gla- 
ciers are  being  withdrawn,  and  life  in 
a  thousand  cheerful,  beautiful  forms  is 
pushing  into  them,  and  new-born  rivers 
are  beginning  to  sing  and  shine  in  them. 
The  old  rivers,  too,  are  growing  longer 
like  healthy  trees,  gaining  new  branches 
and  lakes  as  the  residual  glaciers  at  their 
highest  sources  on  the  mountains  recede, 
while  their  rootlike  branches  in  their 
flat  deltas  are  at  the  same  time  spread- 
ing farther  and  wider  into  the  seas  and 
making  new  lands. 

Under  the  control  of  the  vast  mys- 
terious forces  of  the  interior  of  the 
earth  all  the  continents  and  islands  are 
slowly  rising  or  sinking.  Most  of  the 
mountains  are  diminishing  in  size  under 
the  wearing  action  of  the  weather,  though 
a  few  are  increasing  in  height  and  girth, 
especially  the  volcanic  ones,  as  fresh 
floods  of  molten  rocks  are  piled  on  their 
summits  and  spread  in  successive  layers, 
like  the  wood-rings  of  trees,  on  their 
sides.  And  new  mountains  ai'e  being 
created  from  time  to  time  as  islands  in 
lakes  and  seas,  or  as  subordinate  cones 
on  the  slopes  of  old  ones,  thus  'in  some 
measure  balancing  the  waste  of  okl  beau- 
ty with  new.  Man,  too,  is  making  many 
far-reaching  changes.  This  most  influ- 
ential half  animal,  half  angel  is  rapidly 


Penelope  s 

How  wer\we  to  know  that  it  was  near 
this  fatal  Itjchcaldy?  If  you  think  it 
best,  we  will  hold  no  communication 
with  the  place,  iijid  Mr.  Macdonald  need 
never  know  you  are  here." 

I  thought  Francesca  looked  rather 
g^rtled  at  this  proposition.  At  all  events 
she  s«iid  hastily,  "  Oh  well,  let  it  go  ;  we 
could  not  avoid  each  othei^r  long,  anyway, 
though  is  very  awkward,  of  course  ; 
you  see,  w^  did  not  part  friends." 

"  I  thought  I  had  never  seen  you  on 
more  cordial  terms,"  remarked  Salemina. 

"  But  you  were  n't  there,"  at\swered 
Francesca  unguardedly.  \ 

"  Were  n't  where  ?  "  \ 

"  Were  n't  there."  \ 

"  Where  ? "         \  \ 

"  At  the  station."  \ 

"  What  station  ?  " 

"  The  station  in  Edinburgh  from  which 
I  started  for  the  Highlands." 

"You  never  said  that  be  came  to  see 
you  off." 

"  The  matter  was  too  unimportant  for 
notice  ;  and  the  more  I  think  of  his  being 
here,  the  less  I  mind  it,  after  all ;  and  so, 
dull  care,  begone  !  When  I  first  meet 
him  on  the  sands  or  in  the  loaning,  I 
shall  say,  '  Dear  me,  is  it  Mr.  Macdon- 
ald !  What  brought  you  to  our  quiet 
hamlet  ?  '  (I  shall  put  the  responsibility 
on  him,  you  know.)  '  That  is  the  worst 
of  these  small  countries,  —  people  are 
continually  in  one  another's  Way  !  When 
we  part  forever  in  Ameri^,  we  are  able 
to  stay  parted,  if  we  wisK-'  Then  he  will 
say,  '  Quite  so,  quite  so  ;  but  I  suppose 
even  you.  Miss  Monroe,  will  allow  that 
a  minister  may  not  move  his  church  to 
please  a  lady.'  '  Certainly  not,'  I  shall 
reply,  '  eespecially  when  it  is  Estaib- 
lished ! '  Then  he  will  laugh,  and  we 
shall  be  better  friends  for  a  few  mo- 
ments ;  and  then  I  shall  tell  him  my  latest 
story  about  the  Scotchman  who  prayed, 
'  Lord,  I  do  not  ask  that  Thou  shouklst 
give  me  wealth  ;  only  show  me  where  it 
is,  and  I  will  attend  to  the  rest.'  " 

Salemina  moaned  at  the  delightful  pro- 


Progress.  103 

spect  opening  before  us,  while  I  went  to 
the  piano  and  caroled  impersonally :  — 

"  Oh,  wherefore  did  I  cross  the  Forth, 

And  leave  my  love  behind  me  ? 
Why  did  I  venture  to  the  north 

With  one  that  did  not  mind  me  ? 
I 'm  sure  I 've  seen  a  better  limb 

And  twenty  better  faces  ; 
But  still  my  mind  it  runs  on  him 

When  1  am  at  the  races  I  " 

Francesca  left  the  room  at  this,  and 
closed  the  door  behind  her  with  such 
energy  that  the  bust  of  Sir  Walter  rocked 
on  the  hall  shelf.  Running  upstairs  she 
locked  herself  in  her  bedroom,  and  came 
down  again  only  to  help  us  receive  Jane 
Grieve,  who  arrived  at  eight  o'clock. 

In  times  of  joy,  Salemina,  Francesca, 
and  I  occasionally  have  our  trifling  dif- 
ferences of  opinion,  but  in  hours  of  afflic- 
tion we  are  as  one  flesh.  An  all-wise 
Providence  sent  us  Jane  Grieve  for  fear 
that  we  should  be  too  happy  in  Pettybaw. 
Plans  made  in  heaven  for  the  discipline 
of  sinful  human  flesh  are  always  success- 
ful, and  this  was  no  exception. 

We  had  sent  a  "  machine  "  from  the 
inn  to  meet  her,  and  when  it  drew  up  at 
the  door  we  went  forward  to  greet  the 
rosy  little  Jane  of  our  fancy.  An  aged 
person,  wearing  a  rusty  black  bonnet  and 
shawl,  and  carrying  what  appeared  to  be 
a  tin  cake-box  and  a  baby's  bath-tub,  de- 
scended i-heumatically  from  the  vehicle 
and  announced  herself  as  Miss  Grieve. 
She  was  too  old  to  call  by  her  Christian 
name,  too  sensitive  to  call  by  her  sur- 
name, so  Miss  Grieve  she  remained,  as 
announced,  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  and 
our  rosy  little  Jane  died  before  she  was 
actually  born.  The  man  took  her  curi- 
ous luggage  into  the  kitchen,  and  Sale- 
mina escorted  her  thither,  while  Fran- 
cesca and  I  fell  into  each  other's  arms 
and  laughed  hysterically. 

"  Nobody  need  tell  me  that  she  is  Mrs. 
M'Collop's  sister's  husband's  niece," 
she  whispered,  "  though  she  may  possi- 
bly be  somebody's  grandaunt.  Does  n't 
she  remind  you  of  Mrs.  Gummidge  ?  " 


104  Political  Inmiguration  of  the  Greater  Neio  York. 


Saleraina  returned  in  a  quarter  of  an 
hour,  and  sank  dejectedly  on  the  sofa. 

"  Run  over  to  the  inn,  Francesca."  she 
said,  "  and  order  us  bacon  and  eggs  at 
eight-thirty  to-morrow  morning.  Miss 
Grieve  thinks  we  had  better  not  break- 
fast at  home  until  she  becomes  accus- 
tomed to  the  surroundings." 

"  Had  we  better  allow  her  to  become 
accustomed  to  them  ?  "  I  suggested. 

"  She  came  up  from  Glasgow  to  Ed- 
inburgh for  the  day,  and  went  to  see 
Mrs.  M'Collop  just  as  our  telegram  ar- 
rived. She  was  living  with  an  '  ex- 
es 

tremely  nice  family  '  in  Glasgow,  and 
only  broke  her  engagement  in  order  to 
try  Fifeshire  air  for  the  summer ;  so  she 
will  remain  with  us  as  long  as  she  is 
benefited  by  the  climate." 

"  Can't  we  pay  her  for  a  month  and 
send  her  away  ?  " 

"  How  can  we  ?  She  is  Mrs.  M'Col- 
lop's  sister's  husband's  niece,  and  we  in- 
tend returning  to  Mrs.  M'Collop.  She 

{To  he  c 


has  a  nice  ladylike  appearance,  but 
when  she  takes  her  bonnet  off  she  looks 
seventy  years  old." 

"  She  ought  to  keep  it  off,  then,"  re- 
turned Francesca, for  she  looked  eighty 
with  it  on.  We  shall  have  to  soothe  her 
last  moments,  of  course,  and  pay  her 
funeral  expenses.  Did  you  offer  her  a 
cup  of  tea  and  show  her  the  box-bed  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  but  she  said  the  coals  were  so 
poor  and  hard  she  couldna  batter  them 
oop  to  start  a  fire  the  niclit,  and  she  would 
try  the  box-bed  to  see  if  she  could  sleep 
in  it.  I  am  glad  to  remember  that  it 
was  you  who  telegraphed  for  her,  Penel- 
ope." 

Let  there  be  no  recriminations,"  I 
responded ;  "  let  us  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  this  calamity,  —  is  n't  there 
a  story  called  Calamity  Jane  ?  We 
might  live  at  the  inn,  and  give  her  the 
cottage  for  a  summer  residence,  but  I 
utterly  refuse  to  be  parted  from  our  cat 
and  the  1602  lintel." 

Kate  Dougilas  Wiggin. 

itinned.) 


POLITICAL  INAUGURATION  OF  THE  GREATER  NEW  YORK. 


The  day  after  the  candidate  of  Tam- 
many Hall  was  chosen  mayor  of  the 
greater  New  York,  last  November,  the 
city  turned  to  another  event  significant 
of  much  in  American  civilization.  Even 
the  first  election  of  the  reorganized  and 
consolidated  metropolis  was  to  many  of 
its  citizens  hardl)'  less  interesting  than 
the  opening  of  tiie  largest  hotel  in  the 
world,  the  most  sumptuous,  perhaps,  of 
all  large  hotels.  An  English  visitor, 
though  he  wrote  with  the  Philistine 
glories  of  Thames  Embankment  hotels 
before  his  eyes,  has  ventured  to  give  this 
latest  aspect  of  New  York  life  the  grue- 
some name  of  Sardanapalus.  No  doubt 
Americans  have  not  very  much  to  learn 


from  the  rest  of  the  world  in  the  matter 
of  lavish  display  within  the  dwellings  of 
their  rich  men  and  the  hotels  and  other 
places  of  resort  of  the  well-to-do.  One 
maynovv  find  there  all  that  moderns  know 
of  inlaid  marbles,  rugs,  mural  paintings, 
French  and  German  canvases,  and  syba- 
ritic indulgences  of  the  table.  Semi- 
barbarous,  perhaps,  it  all  is,  and  surely 
far  enough  from  the  modest  amenities 
of  hostelries  like  the  Revere  House  and 
residences  of  Washington  Square  a  half 
century  ago.  The  vast  hotel  palace  tow- 
ering to  the  skies  in  New  York  does 
represent,  however,  something  more  than 
the  mere  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the 
greater  cities  of  America  and  its  doubt- 


Political  Inauguration  of 

ful  ostentations.  It  exhibits  superb  en- 
ergy and  skill  in  mechanical  arts,  and  an 
able  and  now  thoroughly  disciplined  de- 
termination to  triumph  in  the  devices  for 
physical  well-being  as  weU  as  the  appoint- 
ments of  magnificence. 

Still,  one's  reflections  on  this  triumph 
are  not  altogether  cheerful.  So  signal 
an  illustration  of  what  New  York  can 
do  in  hotel-keeping,  coming  when  it  did, 
threw  into  a  painful  depression  many 
sensible  citizens  of  New  York,  who  loved 
their  city,  or  would  love  it  if  they  could. 
Its  success  in  achievements  of  sheer  luxu- 
ry cast  into  deeper  shade  for  them  that 
seeming  failure  of  American  democracy 
to  produce  order,  disciplined  ability,  and 
honor  in  the  government  of  cities  which 
the  Tammany  victory  had  just  demon- 
strated. That  their  country  succeeds  as 
it  does  in  grosser  things  brings  them  no 
comfort,  when  they  see,  as  they  think, 
its  complete  and  final  failure  in  munici- 
pal administration,  —  a  failure  the  more 
lamentable  that  it  comes  at  the  time 
when  municipal  administration  has  be- 
come the  greatest  function  of  the  modern 
state. 

Perhaps  they  ought  not  to  care  for 
"  abroad,"  but  they  do  cai'e  for  it,  and 
all  the  more  when  the  most  patriotic 
pride  cannot  save  them  from  humiliating 
admissions.  They  find  it  irksome  to  hear 
the  British  premier  ask  the  citizens  of 
London,  as  he  did  a  few  days  after  tiie 
New  York  election,  "  Do  you  want  to  be 
governed  like  New  York  ?  "  Or  to  hear 
another  and  equally  important  member 
of  the  British  cabinet,  Mr.  Cliamberlain, 
in  his  very  able  speech  at  Glasgow  on  the 
8th  of  November  last,  explain  "  the  whole 
secret  of  the  failure  of  American  local 
institutions,"  and  admonish  the  British 
workingmen  that  if  they  should  aban- 
don the  businesslike  and  honorable  sys- 
tem upon  which  —  so  he  declared,  and 
seemingly  without  danger  of  contradic- 
tion —  British  public  work  is  conduct- 
ed, they  might  "fall  at  last  as  low"  as 

1  London  Spectator  of  October  30,  1897. 


the  Greater  New  York.  105 

their  "  cousins  unfortunately  have  done." 
Since  they  had  agreed  with  English  jour- 
nals, before  the  result,  that  a  Tammany 
victory  would  "  make  of  New  York  a  rot- 
ten, hopeless  sink,  .  .  .  whose  existence 
would  prove  the  standing  insoluble  pro- 
blem of  American  life,"  ^  they  cannot, 
with  any  satisfaction  to  themselves,  take 
refuge  in  belligerent  anglophobia  when 
they  read,  after  the  result,  that  it  casts 
"  a  lurid  glow  on  the  conditions  of  Amer- 
ican institutions,  and  the  failure  of  the 
world's  most  democratic  people  to  solve 
a  problem  vital  to  the  well-being  of  so- 
ciety." Americans  whose  buoyancy  has 
survived  Lecky's  powerful  summing  up 
against  democracy  read  with  a  pang  the 
foreign  assertions  that  now  "  democratic 
ideals  .  .  .  must  be  relegated  to  the  lira- 
bo  of  exploded  fancies  and  buried  hopes, 
wliither  so  many  fond  illusions  of  the 
enthusiast  have  been  consigned." 

There  is  about  it  all  a  wearing  kind 
of  grief,  such  as  men  feel  when  their 
religious  convictions  are  undermined. 
Every  one  knows  that  democracy  is  to 
prevail  in  the  United  States  ;  every  one 
knows  that  there  will  be  no  turning  back. 
This  much  is  inexorabla.  So  when  those 
who  have  doubted  the  beneficence  of  de- 
mocracy now  have  their  doubts  turned 
into  disbelief,  and  when  those  who  have 
disbelieved  now  find  a  complete  demon- 
stration of  the  evils  of  democratic  gov- 
ernment, the  air  becomes  heavy  with  po- 
litical melancholy.  The  century  is  in- 
deed ending  in  sorrow. 

Is  it  not  worth  while  to  ask  whether 
all  this  be  justified  ?  Did  not  the  future 
of  their  free  institutions  seem,  to  patri- 
otic and  intelligent  Americans,  to  be  quite 
as  gloomy,  to  say  the  least,  during  the 
half  dozen  years  after  the  revolutionary 
war,  and  just  before  the  splendid  success 
of  the  federal  Constitution  ?  Were  not 
Americans  more  humiliated  at  the  bar  of 
foreign  opinion  and  of  their  own  con- 
science by  the  triumph  of  the  slave  pow- 
er and  the  seeming  meanness  of  our  na- 

2  London  Economist  of  October  30,  1897. 


106 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York. 


tional  career  in  the  few  years  before  the 
noble  awakening  of  1861  ?  Is  there  any- 
thing to-day  quite  as  sodden  and  hopeless 
as  the  triumph  of  public  crime  in  New 
York,  and  the  acquiescent  submission 
of  its  reputable  classes,  when,  in  1870, 
Tweed  carried  the  city  by  a  great  ma- 
jority, —  and  this  but  a  few  months  prior 
to  the  uprising  of  its  citizens  in  1871  ? 
If  wise  Americans  ought  not  to  shut 
their  eyes  to  the  public  evils  from  which 
their  great  cities  suffer,  and  which  have 
made  urban  growtli  seem  to  be  in  many 
respects  a  calamity,  ought  they,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  help  increase  the  self-in- 
dulgent temper  of  inefficient  pessimism, 
of  which  we  have  quite  too  much  ?  Is 
not  the  large  and  true  test  of  the  re- 
sult of  the  election  in  the  greater  New 
York  the  chai-acter  of  the  general  pro- 
gress which  it  indicates,  rather  than  the 
mere  inferiority  of  the  municipal  admin- 
istration of  New  York  for  the  next  four 
years  to  what  it  might  have  been  had 
the  election  gone  differently  ?  I  ven- 
ture to  say  that  when  the  election  is 
treated  in  this  way,  when  it  is  rationally 
compared  with  the  past,  there  appears 
in  it  a  real  progress  in  American  poli- 
tics towards  better,  that  is  to  say  towards 
more  vigorous  and  honest  and  enlight- 
ened administration.  No  doubt  another 
opportunity  to  reach  an  immediate  and 
practical  good  has  been  lost,  and  lam- 
entably ;  and  we  are  all  growing  older. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  far  more  plain- 
ly than  ever  before  do  our  municipal 
politics  show  a  powerful  and  wholesome 
tendency. 

Let  us  first  look  at  the  present  loss. 
Many  of  the  pictures  drawn  of  Ameri- 
can "machines"  of  every  political  name 
fail  of  their  effect  because  some  of  the 
colors  used  are  impossible.  The  pictures 
are  therefore  believed  to  be  altogether 
false  by  many  wlio  know  from  a  per- 
sonal knowledge  that  they  are  false  in 
part.  It  was  difficult  to  indict  a  whole 
people  ;  it  is  no  less  difficult  and  unrea- 
sonable to  indict  a  majority  of  the  vot- 


ers of  New  York.  Every  sensible  man 
practically  familiar  with  the  situation 
knows  that  the  plurality  which  has  re- 
turned Tammany  Hall  to  power  includes 
thousands  of  honest,  good  citizens,  and 
even  citizens  both  intelligent  and  hieh- 
minded  ;  that  under  its  restored  admin- 
istration some  things  —  probably  many 
things  —  will  be  well  and  fairly  done  ; 
that  the  masses  of  its  voters  have  not 
deliberately  intended  to  surrender  their 
city  to  corruption  or  incompetency  ;  that 
even  among  its  politicians  are  men  whose 
instincts  are  sound  and  honorable.  The 
picture  might  as  well  be  made  true  ;  it 
is  surely  dark  enough  without  exaggera- 
tion. For,  after  making  just  allowance, 
it  cannot  be  denied  tiiat  nine  tenths  of 
the  organized  jobbery  of  the  city  sought 
Tammany  success  either  directly,  or 
through  the  indirect  but  no  less  practical 
alliance  of  the  Republican  organization, 
—  a  machine  more  Anglo-Saxon,  per- 
haps, in  its  equipment,  but  not  a  whit 
better  in  morals,  than  its  rival.  Tam- 
many Hall  will  in  the  future  appoint  to 
office  some  men  having  energy,  skill,  and 
character  fit  for  their  places  as  it  has  done 
in  the  past ;  but  so,  no  doubt,  will  it  put 
into  the  hands  of  brutal,  reckless,  igno- 
rant, and  grossly  dishonest  men  an  enor- 
mous and  varied  power  over  their  fellow 
citizens.  The  scandals  and  crimes  of  the 
past  will  not  return  in  full  measure,  for 
the  rising  standard  of  public  morality  af- 
fects even  political  machines.  We  are 
bound,  however,  to  assume  that  they 
will  return  in  a  most  corrupting  and  in- 
jurious measure. 

For  the  argument  of  the  reformers,  it 
is  unnecessary  to  deny  that  the  Tamma- 
ny candidates  for  the  two  great  offices 
of  mayor  and  comptroller  are  personal- 
ly well  disposed  ;  for  it  is  notorious  — 
there  was  not  the  slightest  concealment 
of  the  fact  during  the  Tammany  cam- 
paign —  that  they  were  not  chosen  for 
their  own  equipment  in  ability,  in  expe- 
rience for  the  duties  of  really  great  and 
critical  offices  requiring  statesmanship 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York.  107 


of  the  highest  order,  or  in  public  confi- 
dence earned  by  any  past  public  service. 
As  sometimes,  though  very  rarely,  has 
happened  with  successful  candidates  of 
the  machine,  it  is  possible  that  after  all 
they  may  have  the  necessary  ability,  and 
may  have  the  sense  of  right  and  force 
of  character  to  use  it  in  the  public  in- 
terest. If  that  turn  out  to  be  the  case, 
those  who  selected  them  will  be  as  much 
shocked  as  the  community  will  be  re- 
joiced. They  were  chosen  from  among 
the  large  body  of  men  counted  upon  to 
do  absolutely,  and  without  troublesome 
protest,  the  will  of  the  powerful  politi- 
cians, with  no  official  responsibility,  who 
nominated  them,  and  who  are  tolerably 
skillful  in  judgment  of  this  kind  of  hu- 
man nature.  But  subject  to  that  condi- 
tion Tammany  Hall  preferred  for  candi- 
dates men  having  as  much  personal  and 
pojjular  respect,  or  at  least  as  little  pop- 
ular dislike  or  disrespect,  as  public  men 
could  have  who  should  seem  fully  to 
meet  so  unworthy  a  test. 

Nor  is  it  helpful  to  sketch  with  in- 
credible lines  the  politcians  who  made 
these  nominations.  It  would  be  unjust 
and  untrue  to  say  of  all  of  them,  as  is 
sometimes  said  truly  of  powerful  politi- 
cians, that  conscious  concern  for  the 
honor  or  welfare  of  their  community, 
distinct  from  sheerly  selfish  personal  in- 
tent, enters  their  heads  as  rarely  as  a 
pang  for  a  dead  private  soldier  struck 
the  heart  of  Napoleon.  It  is  both  just 
and  true,  however,  to  say  of  many  of 
those  politicians  that  they  never  know 
that  conscious  concern.  The  first  and 
supremely  dominant  motive  of  most  of 
them  —  as  the  most  generous  observer 
is  compelled  to  concede  —  is  personal 
gain  and  advantage,  with  no  more  re- 
gard for  the  trust  obligations  of  public 
life  than  is  coerced  by  the  fear  of  public 
opinion,  or  rather  by  the  fear  that  such 
public  opinion  may  become  dangerous  to 
their  private  or  public  safety.  They  are 
quite  as  bad  in  this  respect  as  the  mem- 
bers of  the  cabal  of  Charles  II.,  or  the 


Loughboroughs  and  Newcastles  of  a  cen- 
tury later,  or  even  as  the  objects  of  the 
Crimean  investigation  of  1855.  Careers 
like  theirs  have  made  the  personal  cor- 
ruption and  incompetence  of  aristocratic 
government,  and  its  disloyalty  to  public 
welfare,  primary  object  lessons  in  the 
politics  of  generations  far  from  ancient, 
and  every  land  lying  between  the  Atlan- 
tic and  the  Caucasus. 

It  would  not  be  just  to  say  that  the 
Tammany  campaign  was  one  of  pretense, 
even  skillful  pretense.  The  absence  of 
necessity  for  pretense  in  that  campaign 
ought  of  itself  to  arouse  a  deep  anxiety. 
Except  now  and  then  in  a  perfunctory 
mention  of  tax  rates  or  inadequate  school 
accommodation  and  the  like,  and  except, 
of  course,  in  the  traditional  forms  of 
speech  about  the  rights  of  the  people, 
Tammany  Hall  was  tolerably  frank.  It 
deliberately  refused  to  virtue  the  tribute 
of  the  cant  that  it  too  desired  those  bet- 
ter things  which  the  "  reformers  "  af- 
fected to  seek.  Not  only  was  it  daunt- 
less under  the  flaming  exhibition  of  its 
police  and  police  courts  made  in  1894, 
but  it  stood  with  exjjllcit  and  bad  cour- 
age upon  that  very  record  which  had 
received  a  damning  popular  judgment 
not  only  in  the  decent  homes  of  New 
York,  but  at  the  polls  of  the  city.  Its  ora- 
tors admitted,  or  rather  they  insisted, 
that  the  powers  of  the  new  municipality 
would  be  and  ought  to  be  used  for  the 
benefit  of  its  organization  ;  nor  was  it 
seriously  denied,  or  thought  necessary  to 
deny  seriously,  that  they  would  also  and 
largely  be  used  for  the  personal  gain  of 
a  very  few  men.  As  to  that,  it  seemed 
a  sufficient  answer  to  make  it  clear  that 
if  the  Tammany  victory  meant  great 
personal  gain  to  a  few  men,  it  likewise 
meant  lesser  gain  to  large  numbers  of 
men  throughout  the  city,  who  would  find 
their  advantage  in  violations  of  law  and 
in  sacrifices  of  public  interest. 

Since,  then,  the  successful  candidates 
were  chosen  as  they  were ;  since  the 
worst  forces  of  the  metropolis  earnestly 


108  Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  JVew  York. 


promoted  their  success  ;  since  such  are 
the  ideals,  the  character,  and  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  powerful  but  irresponsible 
politicians  who  have  chosen  them,  and 
who,  ten  chances  to  one,  will  absolutely 
control  them ;  and  since  they  have  been 
chosen  with  no  embarrassing  public  com- 
mittal to  any  specific  measure  of  econo- 
my or  efficiency,  it  is  no  doubt  difficult 
to  hope  that  their  administration  will  be 
either  enlightened  or  useful.  New  York 
seems  doomed  to  a  low  standard  of  civic 
administration  till  the  end  of  1901. 

Nor  was  this  all  the  grief  of  the  "  re- 
formers." Most  of  them  suffered  keen 
disappointment.  And  indeed  there  was 
good  reason  to  hope  at  least  for  a  better 
result.  The  greater  New  York  had  be- 
fore it  an  exalting  opportunity.  This 
was  to  be  the  first  election  since  the  con- 
stitutional separation  of  municipal  from 
national  elections,  and  fi'om  state  elec- 
tions excejjt  in  the  choice  of  judges  and 
of  members  of  the  lower  house  of  the 
legislature.  Public  attention  was  almost 
exclusively  directed,  so  far  as  law  could 
direct  it,  to  the  welfare  of  the  city. 
Then  there  was  the  consolidation  which 
interested  the  world  ;  the  election  was  to 
be  on  a  grander  scale  than  any  city  had 
yet  known, — it  surely  must  touch  the 
imagination  as  never  before.  Whatever 
the  faults  of  the  charter,  it  did  create  the 
second  municipality  of  the  world  in  pop- 
ulation and  in  wealth,  —  a  city  unsur- 
passed the  world  over  in  natural  advan- 
tages, and  in  the  energy,  intelligence, 
and  morality  of  its  citizens.  It  was  not 
unnatural  for  reformers  to  think  that  the 
inspiration  of  all  this  must  reach  and 
control  most  citizens. 

The  elections  from  1893  to  1896  had 
shown  widespread  independence  among 
the  Democrats,  who  constituted  the  great 
majority  of  the  voters  of  New  York. 
All  Republicans,  or  nearly  all,  it  was 
assumed,  would  be  enemies  of  Tammany 
Hall.  Besides,  it  seemed  too  plain  to  be 
forgotten  by  the  builders  and  mechanics 
of  New  York,  its  manufacturers  and  the 


great  classes  engaged  in  transportation 
on  its  harbor  and  bounding  rivers,  that 
their  interests  required  a  higher  standard 
of  administration  than  either  political 
machine  could  or  would  give.  The  news- 
paper press,  tlie  pulpit,  and  the  chief  re- 
presentatives of  the  business  and  social 
life  of  the  city  stood  overwhelmingly  for 
the  new  departure.  Then  there  was 
great  hope  —  and,  as  it  turned  out,  not 
without  reason  —  that  Tammany  would 
not  completely  hold  the  poorer  quarters 
of  the  city,  as  it  had  held  them  for  years. 
Since  its  defeat  in  1894,  less  fortunate 
citizens,  under  Mayor  Strong,  had  se- 
cured a  far  larger  share  of  the  benefits 
of  good  administration  than  ever  before  ; 
and  the  benefits  were  such  as  could  not 
be  overlooked  even  by  a  casual  passer-by. 
Under  Colonel  Waring's  vigorous  and 
popular  control  of  the  street-cleaning  and 
the  wise  distribution  of  the  still  meagre 
provision  for  good  paving,  many  densely 
crowded  districts  had  lost  their  aspect 
of  public  squalor. 

Moreover,  much  had  been  done  at  the 
very  foundation  of  public  sentiment  by 
the  University  Settlement  and  other  noble 
and  thriving  societies.  James  B.  Rey- 
nolds and  his  associates  had  been  admi- 
rably successful  in  the  popularization  of 
sound  politics.  For  a  full  year  the  dis- 
cussions of  the  plan  of  a  greater  New 
York  had  been  so  incessant  and  so  elo- 
quent that  it  seemed  incredible  that  po- 
litical light  should  not  have  permeated 
the  entire  city.  In  short,  it  was  per- 
fectly reasonable  to  believe  that,  what- 
ever might  be  the  difficulties  of  the  new 
charter,  the  popular  intelligence  was  at 
last  alert,  the  popular  conscience  at  last 
deeply  stirred  and  responsive  to  popular 
feeling.  The  reformers  were  fond  of 
saying  that  the  revolution  in  municipal 
politics  was  at  last  upon  us.  The  seem- 
ing reasonableness  of  all  this  hope  added 
material  bitterness  to  the  result. 

Even  this  does  not  sum  up  the  disap- 
pointment. It  grew  more  poignant  when 
the  reformers  recalled  the  immediate 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  YorJc.  109 


thing  which  the  city  rejected.  It  could 
have  had  its  executive  administration  in  , 
the  hands  of  Seth  Low,  and  its  financial 
administration  in  the  hands  of  Charles 
S.  Fairchild.  Those  men  represented, 
in  their  training,  their  careers,  and  their 
ideals,  the  very  best  of  American  public 
life  ;  and  no  public  life  in  the  world  has 
anything  better.  Mr.  Fairchild  had  held 
with  distinguished  honor  the  high  office 
of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States,  and  had  been  attorney- 
general  of  the  state.  He  had  exhib- 
ited courage  and  energy  of  the  first 
order  as  a  political  leader.  The  candi- 
dates represented  a  rational  measure  of 
enthusiasm.  They  believed  that  public 
life  could  be  made  better.  They  believed 
that  enormous  improvement  could  be 
made,  and  made  now,  in  the  administra- 
tion of  American  cities.  Without  this 
belief  nothing  very  good  was  likely  to 
be  accomplished.  But  further,  they  had 
demonstrated  by  practical  experience  in 
great  affairs  that  they  were  not  visiona- 
ries ;  that  they  could,  as  well  as  would, 
improve  the  standard  of  administration. 

The  problems  of  that  administration, 
ready  for  immediate  solution,  and  capa- 
ble of  solution  by  Mr.  Low  and  Mr. 
Fairchild,  were  admirably  presented  in 
the  brief  declaration  of  the  Citizens' 
Union.  Its  members  proposed  to  make 
of  municipal  administration  a  business, 
to  be  carried  on  with  the  zeal  and  loy- 
alty and  skill  which  a  highly  competent 
man  brings  to  the  transaction  of  his  own 
business.  They  were  ready  to  continue 
the  substitution  of  the  best  of  modern 
pavements  for  those  which  had  so  long 
disgraced  the  city.  They  were  ready  to 
enforce  sanitary  regulations  that  are  of 
real  consequence  to  all,  but  of  vital  con- 
sequence to  the  least  fortunate  in  a  large 
city.  They  proposed  the  establishment 
of  public  lavatories,  the  almost  complete 
absence  of  which  in  New  York  seems 
to  any  one  familiar  with  great  foreign 
cities  an  incredible  and  stupid  disgrace. 
They  proposed  a  rational  treatment  of 


the  problem  of  parks  and  of  transit  fa- 
cilities. They  gave  a  pledge,  which 
everybody  knew  to  be  honest,  that  pub- 
lic franchises  would  not  be  surrendered 
into  the  hands  of  private  persons  ;  that 
the  city  would  not,  as  it  had  done  in 
the  past,  give  up  the  common  property 
and  profit  of  all  in  the  streets  to  the 
enrichment  of  a  few.  Above  all,  they 
promised  —  and  everybody  knew  they 
would  keep  the  promise  —  that  if  the 
great  powers  of  the  mayoralty  and  comp- 
troUership  should  come  to  them,  those 
powers  would  be  used  solely  in  the  pub- 
lic interest,  without  that  personal  prosti- 
tution of  the  offices  of  the  city  to  which 
we  have  become  so  lamentably  used,  or 
that  political  prostitution  of  them  to  the 
real  or  fancied  exigencies  of  national 
politics. 

We  have  never  known  a  more  cred- 
itable campaign  than  theirs.  If  it  did 
not  command  a  majority  of  the  votes,  it 
did  command  a  substantial  and  univer- 
sal respect.  It  rendered  a  lasting  ser- 
vice to  American  politics.  Ordinarily 
the  defeated  head  of  a  ticket  has  lost  his 
"  availability  ;  "  but  to-day  Seth  Low, 
it  is  agreeable  to  see,  occupies  a  more 
enviable  position  than  he  has  ever  held, 
or  than  is  held  by  any  other  American 
now  active  in  politics.  He  has  the  de- 
served good  fortune  to  stand  before  the 
country  for  a  cause  which,  to  the  aver- 
age American,  is  largely  embodied  in 
his  person.  What  was  believed  before 
his  nomination  was  confirmed  at  the  elec- 
tion :  he  was  plainly  the  strongest  can- 
didate who  could  have  been  chosen  to 
represent  his  cause.  He  polled  40,000 
votes  more  than  his  ticket ;  that  is  to 
say,  there  were  that  number  of  citizens 
to  whom  the  cause  meant  Seth  Low,  and 
no  one  else,  or  who  were  willing  to  leave 
the  tickets  of  their  respective  machines 
only  on  the  mayoralty,  that  they  might 
cast  their  votes  for  him.  He  has  come 
out  of  the  campaign  far  stronger  than  he 
entered  it. 

So  much  for  the  disappointments  of 


110  Political  Inauguration  of  the  Grtater  New  York. 


the  election.  There  were,  on  tlie  other 
hand,  some  conditions  recognized  in  ad- 
vance as  distinctly  unfavorable  to  suc- 
cess. For  several  reasons,  it  was  seen, 
—  and  upon  this  Tammany  Hall  openly 
counted,  —  the  test  at  the  polls  would 
not  represent  the  full  strength  of  the  re- 
form cause.  The  trend  of  independent 
sentiment  in  New  York  was  distinctly 
away  from  the  Republican  party ;  and 
the  independent  Democrats  had  become 
so  hostile  to  what  they  considered  to  be 
Republican  misdoing  that  they  were  ani- 
mated by  a  really  intense  desire  to  cast 
the  most  efifective  vote  against  the  Re- 
publican ticket.  For  months  before  the 
election  of  1897,  the  temper  of  even 
the  most  liberal  of  the  Gold  Democrats 
was  raw.  They  were  inclined  —  doubt- 
less too  much  inclined  —  to  forget  mis- 
behavior of  their  own  party.  But  this 
was  natural.  In  1896  they  had  made 
serious  political  sacrifices  by  repudiation 
of  the  Chicago  candidates  and  platform. 
To  most  of  them  opposition  to  a  protec- 
tive tariff  was  the  fii"st  political  cause 
save  one,  the  preservation  of  the  finan- 
cial honor  of  the  country  by  a  firm 
adherence  to  the  gold  standard.  They 
were  glad  to  be  known  as  Gold  Demo- 
crats. The  Republican  administration, 
though  it  came  to  Washington  by  their 
votes,  promptly  treated  them,  as  tliey 
thought,  with  a  sort  of  contumely.  They 
saw  no  effort  made  to  establish  the 
national  finances  upon  the  sound  basis 
of  intrinsic  and  universally  recognized 
value ;  instead  they  were  affronted  by  the 
Wolcott  mission  to  Europe  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  free  coinage  of  silver.  The 
administration,  they  felt,  had  left  them 
little  party  excuse  for  supporting  it. 
The  Dingley  bill  seemed  to  them  the 
sum  of  tariff  iniquities.  And  then,  de- 
scending from  greater  things  to  less,  the 
Democratic  federal  office-holders  who 
were  not  protected  by  the  civil  service 
law,  and  who  in  1896  had  stood  for 
sound  money,  were  treated  in  the  old 
prescriptive  fashion. 


If  the  Republican  national  adminis- 
tration had  become  obnoxious  to  Demo- 
crats of  this  temper,  the  Republican  ad- 
ministration at  Albany  since  January  1, 
1897,  seemed  nothing  less  than  detest- 
able. In  tlie  opinion  of  the  independent 
body  of  voters  in  the  state,  nothing 
worse,  nothing  more  barbarous  or  ig- 
norant, had  been  known  before  in  the 
executive  control  of  the  state.  The  gov- 
ernor's appointment  of  men  of  scanda- 
lous record  to  great  places,  and  his  detei"- 
mined  and  measurably  successful  attempt 
to  defeat  the  civil  service  reform  article 
of  the  new  constitution,  had  gone  a  long 
way  toward  making  it  seem  the  first 
political  duty  of  good  citizens  to  punish 
him  and  the  party  organization  which 
stood  behind  him.  How  could  this  be 
done,  according  to  American  political 
usage,  except  by  voting  "  tJte  Demo- 
cratic ticket  "  ?  And  this,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  such  real  or  fancied  wrongs 
and  affronts,  independent  Democrats  felt 
an  eager  desire  to  do. 

The  Republican  machine  in  New  York 
contributed  all  in  its  power  to  augment 
this  feeling.  No  defeat  of  Tammany 
Hall  was  possible,  as  it  well  knew,  un- 
less with  the  support  of  70,000  or  80,000 
Democrats.  Yet  it  industriously  made 
it  difficult  for  the  most  liberal  of  Demo- 
crats to  vote  against  the  nominee  of  their 
party  convention,  if  that  vote  would  add 
to  the  probability  of  Republican  success. 
It  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a  political  axiom 
that  a  political  party  should  carefully 
avoid  the  hostility  of  strong  feeling  upon 
any  subject  irrelevant  to  the  matter  in 
hand.  Such  a  course  is  foolish  in  the 
extreme ;  and  there  has  been  no  better 
illustration  of  the  folly  than  in  the  be- 
havior of  the  Republican  machine.  The 
Republican  convention  declared  that  the 
"  one  great  issue  before  the  people  at 
this  time  " —  that  is  to  say,  in  the  mayor- 
alty campaign  of  New  Yoi-k  —  was  "  the 
issue  created  by  the  Chicago  platform." 
It  presented  candidates  who,  if  they 
were  chosen,  could  have  in  their  official 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York. 


Ill 


relations  no  national  function  whatever, 
whose  measures  and  official  acts  could 
be  in  no  way  related  to  the  tariff  or  cur- 
rency or  foreign  affairs.  Could  anything, 
therefore,  be  more  grotesque  than  tiie 
following  sentences  in  the  platform  upon 
which  General  Tracy  was  nominated? 
"  We  indorse  the  St.  Louis  platform. 
.  .  .  We  indorse  the  patriotic  and  suc- 
cessful administration  of  William  Mc- 
Kinley.  He  was  truly  the  '  advance 
agent  of  prosperity.'  We  congratulate 
the  people  upon  the  passage  of  a  Repub- 
lican protective  tariff  bill.  .  .  .  No  duty 
can  be  so  obvious  as  that  of  the  people 
of  this  commercial  city  to  sustain  the 
party  which  has  so  completely  and  so 
surely  rescued  the  country  from  the  finan- 
cial depression  into  which  it  had  been 
plunged  by  Democratic  follies." 

To  the  intense  desire  of  every  Demo- 
crat to  strike  the  most  effective  blow 
possible  at  the  Republican  party  was  due, 
no  doubt,  a  material  part  of  the  Tam- 
many plurality.  This,  however,  is  only 
palliation.  To  vote  for  the  Tammany 
candidate  on  this  account,  rather  than 
for  Seth  Low,  may  have  been  natural ; 
but  it  was  the  height  of  unreason  to  vote 
for  one  wrong  because  of  irritation  at 
another  wrong.  An  impeachment  of  de- 
mocracy for  folly  and  incompetence  is 
hardly  less  formidable  than  for  moral 
wrong. 

Before  proceeding  to  judgment,  how- 
ever, we  have  to  consider  temporally  con- 
ditions which  have  prevailed  in  New 
York,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  de- 
mocracy, but  which  enormously  helped  on 
the  result.  The  first  of  these  was  its  cos- 
mopolitan character.  Of  its  present  pop- 
ulation, one  third  are  foreign-born,  and 
another  third  are  children  of  foreign-born 
parents.  Of  the  third  who  are  Ameri- 
cans, a  very  large  proportion  came  to 
New  York  after  reaching  manhood.  Still, 
it  is  not  the  large  existing  Irish  or  Ger- 
man or  Scandinavian  population  which 
is  the  serious  factor,  or  even  the  continu- 
ous addition  of  the  distressed  and  de- 


moralized from  foreign  lands.  It  is  prob- 
able that  either  the  Americans,  or  the 
Irish,  or  the  Germans,  or  the  Scandina- 
vians, by  themselves  and  separate  from 
the  others,  would  make  a  far  better 
city  government.  The  European  or 
American  cities  which  are  held  up  as 
models  to  New  York  have  homogeneous 
populations  ;  the  foreigners  are  only  vis- 
itors or  small  colonies  having  no  share 
in  political  power.  New  York,  in  reality, 
consists  of  several  great  communities, 
essentially  foreign  to  one  another,  which 
share  the  government  between  them  with 
many  struggles  and  rivalries.  Every 
nmnicipal  ticket  must  have  at  least  its 
American  and  Irish  and  German  candi- 
dates. For  a  complete  union  of  these 
various  strains  of  population  we  need 
not  years,  but  generations.  Mere  birth 
and  residence  within  the  limits  of  New 
York  do  not  give  that  root  in  the  soil 
which  makes  the  citizen  a  firm  and  use- 
ful member  of  the  community.  He  does 
not  belong  to  the  whole  city  if  he  be  one 
of  a  body  of  citizens  foreign  to  all  other 
citizens. 

Venerable  in  years  as  New  York  is 
coming  to  be,  it  still  retains  many  fea- 
tures of  a  shifting  camp.  Its  population 
comes  and  goes.  There  is  within  its  lim- 
its not  a  single  square  mile,  or  probably 
half  that  territory,  a  majority  of  whose 
inhabitants  or  of  their  parents  were  there 
twenty-five  years  ago.  Political  rela- 
tions, social  relations,  neighborhood  re- 
lations, have  been  changing  with  a  ra- 
pidity unknown  in  the  great  urban 
communities  of  western  Europe.  This 
condition  is  highly  inconsistent  with  good 
politics  or  sound  and  steady  public  sen- 
timent, whatever  the  form  of  govern- 
ment. If  it  be  said  that  in  Philadelphia 
and  in  other  cities  where  the  American 
population  is  preponderant  there  is  great 
corruption,  it  must  be  answered  that  in 
them  precisely  the  same  condition  ex- 
ists, although  to  a  smaller  degree.  In 
Philadelphia  the  overpowering  and  con- 
spicuously present  interests  of  the  pro- 


112 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York. 


tective  system  have  stifled  the  local  con- 
science. There  patriotism  becomes  "  the 
last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel."  Sound  local 
politics  depend  upon  the  kind  of  con- 
tinuous local  life  illustrated  in  quarters 
of  London  which,  a  century  ago,  were 
eligible  for  superior  residences,  and  are 
still  eligible,  or  in  the  quarters  of  what 
are  called  lower  middle  class  residences, 
where  one  still  sees  the  house-fronts  and 
methods  of  living  described  in  Dickens's 
earlier  novels,  and  the  children  and 
grandchildren  of  his  characters. 

A  further  demoralizing  influence  which 
has  prevented  any  municipal  election  in 
New  York  from  fairly  and  directly  re- 
presenting its  public  sentiment  has  been 
its  enervating  dependence  upon  the  le- 
gislature at  Albany.  The  great  majori- 
ty of  that  body  are  ignorant  of  the  city. 
Their  habits  and  prejudices  are  foreign 
to  it ;  and  they  look  with  more  or  less 
animosity  upon  its  large  accumulations 
of  wealth.  The  city  has  been  ruled  by 
special  legislation,  —  and  this,  it  is  lam- 
entable to  say,  with  the  moral  support 
of  much  of  its  intelligence.  Its  inhabit- 
ants have  been  trained  to  suppose  tlie 
true  cure  of  a  political  evil  to  be  an  ap- 
peal, not  to  political  bodies  or  forces  at 
home,  but  to  legislation  in  a  city  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  distant.  The 
charter  of  greater  New  York  is  bad 
enough  in  this  respect,  but  the  charter 
under  which  New  York  has  lived  for 
generations  has  been  even  worse.  Nearly 
all  its  provisions  have  been  in  perpetual 
legislative  flux  ;  its  amendment  has  usu- 
ally been  unrelated  to  the  public  senti- 
ment of  the  city,  and  has  frequently  vio- 
lated it.  No  system  can  be  imagined 
better  fitted  to  destroy  intelligent,  popu- 
lar self-reliance,  —  and  this  whether  the 
distant  power  be  democratic,  or  aristo- 
cratic, or  autocratic. 

To  all  of  these  conditions  which  have 
made  popular  elections  in  New  York  city 
unrepresentative  of  the  ideal  of  govern- 
ment held  by  its  electors  —  to  all  of  these 
conditions  seriously  inconsistent  with  any 


good  politics  —  have  for  generations 
been  added  the  intensely  and  almost  ex- 
clusively commercial  and  business  tem- 
per of  its  population.  It  has  been  to  the 
last  degree  difficult  to  secure  from  its 
business  men  systematic,  continuous,  and 
unselfish  attention  to  public  affairs ;  such 
attention,  for  instance,  as  is  given  by  the 
same  classes  to  the  government  of  Ham- 
burg, or  as  has  been  given,  even  in  New 
York,  within  the  past  generation  by  two 
very  remarkable  men,  Samuel  J.  Tilden 
and  Abram  S.  Hewitt.  The  situation 
has  been  little  helped  by  the  sporadic 
participation  in  machine  politics  of  a 
few  rich  men,  —  generally  young  men, 
—  whose  notion  of  public  life  is  the  mere 
possession  and  prestige  of  official  title, 
rather  than  any  moral  or  real  political 
power,  or  any  constructive  or  useful  ex- 
ercise of  public  influence.  By  their  i-e- 
f usal  to  stand  for  any  good  cause  except 
as  permitted  by  the  "  boss,"  they  have 
made  contemptible  the  politics  of  the 
jeunesse  doree  and  the  "  business  man  in 
politics."  On  the  other  hand,  the  ad- 
mirable body  of  younger  men  who  have 
come  into  activity  in  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  within  ten  or  fifteen  years  have 
not  constituted  a  political  force  contin- 
uous or  disciplined,  until  very  recently, 
although  more  than  once  they  have  done 
signal  service,  like  the  establishment  by 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  when  a  member  of 
the  lower  house  at  Albany,  of  the  mayor's 
sole  responsibility  for  appointments  of 
departmental  heads.  These,  however, 
are  exceptions.  The  complete  separation 
of  political  life  from  business  and  com- 
mercial life  has  been  the  rule,  and  in  a 
modern  democracy  nothing  is  more  in- 
consistent with  good  administration. 

We  are  looking  a  long  way  back,  but 
the  efficient  causes  of  what  is  discredit- 
able in  the  New  York  election  are  a 
long  way  back.  The  result  was  deter- 
mined principally  by  deep  and  slowly 
changing  conditions,  not  by  skill  or  man- 
agement or  bribery  on  one  side,  or  by 
lack  of  organization  on  the  other.  De- 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York.  113 


mocratic  government  in  a  city  means 
free  elections  by  its  citizens,  but  it  does 
not  imply  or  necessitate  incompetence 
or  dishonor.  The  result  was  due  not 
to  the  democracy  of  the  city,  but  to  its 
shifting  and  camplike  character,  the 
heterogeneity  of  its  population,  and  the 
lack  of  political  continuity  in  its  life,  — 
all  necessarily  incident  to  its  enormous 
and  rapid  growth,  while  it  has  been  the 
entrance  gate  of  America  for  all  the 
races  of  men,  and  to  a  signal  indiffer- 
ence to  the  government  of  the  city  on 
the  part  of  its  business  and  representa- 
tive men.  The  not  unfriendly  com- 
ments of  friends  in  England  and  the 
patriotic  fears  of  those  of  our  own  house- 
hold have  no  deep  or  permanent  foun- 
dation in  fact.  Democracy  certainly  is 
not  responsible  for  the  ui'ban  phenomena 
of  Constantinople  or  the  corruptions  and 
oppressions  of  great  Russian  cities.  On 
the  other  hand,  municipal  corruption  and 
incompetence  subsist  and  have  subsisted 
with  an  abiding  and  homogeneous  popu- 
lation governed  autocratically  or  by  an 
"  upper  class."  Democracy  was  not  re- 
sponsible for  local  administration  in  Eng- 
land one  or  two  centuries  ago.  In  Eng- 
lish cities  of  to-day,  however,  where  the 
population  is  abiding  and  homogeneous, 
and  where  governmental  power  is  almost 
sheerly  democratic,  we  see  municipal 
administration  at  a  very  high  point  of 
honor  and  efficiency.  So  in  many  of 
the  New  England  cities  and  some  of  the 
smaller  cities  of  the  South  we  see  far 
less  disparity  between  the  standards  of 
public  and  private  life  than  in  New  York. 
Not  that  the  democracy  of  their  govern- 
ment is  less,  but  that  the  steadiness  and 
homogeneity  of  their  populations  are 
greater. 

The  one  and  perhaps  the  only  feature 
characteristic  of  American  democracy 
which  tends  to  inefficient  and  corrupt 
municipal  administration  is  the  dispar- 
agement of  public  life  which  has  gone 
so  far  since  the  civil  war.  This  has 
been  a  national  misfortune.    But  its  in- 

VOL.  LXXXI.  —  NO.  483.  8 


fluence  is  seen  no  more  in  cities  than 
in  other  political  communities.  It  has 
been,  to  say  the  least,  quite  as  conspicu- 
ous a  feature  of  administration  at  Wash- 
ington as  at  New  York.  This  of  itself 
is  a  large  subject,  which  can  be  dealt 
with  now  but  casually.  While  the  popu- 
lar ideal  of  a  man  qualified  to  liold  an 
,  important  public  office,  requiring  the 
most  powerful  and  disciplined  facul- 
ties, is  the  '•  plain  man,  like  all  the  rest 
of  us,"  one  out  of  ten  thousand  or  a 
million  ;  while  it  is  left  to  private  cor- 
porations and  great  business  interests 
to  observe  the  rule  that  exceptional  gifts 
and  training  in  chief  administrative  of- 
ficers are  necessary  to  the  safety  and 
profit  of  the  business,  we  must  expect 
public  administration  to  be  on  a  stan- 
dard lower  than  the  administration  of 
private  affairs. 

A  labor  representative  in  the  British 
Parliament  was  quoted  by  Joseph  Cham- 
berlain, in  his  recent  speech  at  Glasgow, 
as  saying  that  nobody  is  worth  more 
than  £500  a  year.  On  this  text  Mr. 
Chamberlain,  not  without  reason,  at- 
tributed what  he  called  "  the  failure  of 
American  local  institutions,"  first  to  the 
jealousy  of  superior  qualifications  and 
reward  in  the  great  and  critical  places 
of  government,  and,  next,  to  a  tendency 
to  give  compensation  far  beyond  value 
in  lower  and  more  numerous  places. 
The  result  of  this  tendency,  he  as- 
serted, is  to  create  a  privileged  class  of 
workmen,  to  whom  public  place  is  in 
itself  a  distinct  advantage,  instead  of 
letting  them  share  the  conditions  of  other 
men  doing,  in  private  life,  the  same 
amount  and  character  of  work.  The 
jealousy  of  personal  superiority  in  places 
of  superior  power  and  responsibility  in- 
evitably leads,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the 
exclusion  from  those  places  of  the  very 
talents  which  are  necessary  to  the  trans- 
action of  the  business.  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain acutely  pointed  out  that  the  chief 
sufferers  from  this  system  are  the  masses 
of  wage-earners  not  in  public  employ,  — 


114  Political  Inavguration  of  the  Greater  New  York. 


they  standing  in  the  position  of  the  share- 
holders, and  not  emijloyees,  of  a  pri- 
vate corporation,  the  principal  officers 
of  which  are  incompetent,  and  the  ma- 
jority of  whose  employees  are  overpaid. 
No  doubt  the  inadequacy  of  compensa- 
tion in  more  important  governmental 
offices  as  compared  with  private  employ- 
ment is  really  injurious  to  the  standard 
of  public  service.  Private  employment 
withdraws  ability  from  public  life.  It  is 
common  nowadays  in  the  United  States 
for  public  place  to  be  valued  by  really 
able  men  as  a  useful  and  legitimate 
means  of  advertisement  of  their  fitness 
for  great  private  trusts.  But  so  strong  is 
the  attractiveness  of  public  service  where 
it  really  brings  both  honor  and  power 
that,  in  our  country  at  least,  the  inade- 
quacy of  compensation  is  not  very  disas- 
trous. The  really  serious  thing  is  the 
sort  of  disparaging  contempt  with  which 
the  exercise  of  great  powers  of  govern- 
ment is  treated.  The  disparagement  of 
public  life  ought  to  be  the  topic  of  many 
essays  and  sermons.  But  the  evil  is  not 
peculiar  to  cities. 

So  much  for  the  dai'ker  side  of  the 
New  York  election.  So  much  by  way 
of  explanation  of  the  result  in  past  causes 
whose  effects  we  may  believe  are  only 
temporary.  Are  we  not  bound  to  turn 
to  the  other  side,  and  ask.  What  is  the 
promise  for  the  future  ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  conditions  for 
good  politics  have  at  last  begun  to  mend. 
The  population  of  New  York  grows  more 
homogeneous.  The  addition  from  for- 
eign immigration  has  long  been  relatively 
declining.  The  proportion  of  native- 
born  citizens  has  already  increased,  and 
will  henceforth  go  on  increasing.  The 
second  generation  begins  to  be  American 
in  type  ;  the  third  generation  is  quite 
American.  The  foreign  strains  of  popu- 
lation mingle  more  and  more.  If  the 
children  of  German  parents  learn  Ger- 
man, it  is  not  their  vernacular.  The 
American  politics  of  children  of  parents 
born  in  Ireland  become  less  dependent 


upon  the  wrongs  of  that  afflicted  land. 
There  are  districts  of  the  greater  New 
York  which  begin  to  have  a  settled  neigh- 
borhood feeling  ;  that  condition  will  rap- 
idly increase.  The  dependence  of  New 
York  upon  Albany  legislation  is  not,  alas, 
at  an  end  ;  but  the  discussions  over  the 
new  charter,  and  the  great  increase  in  the 
numerical  weight  of  the  city,  in  the  legis- 
lature, will  make  that  interference  more 
difficult.  New  York  is  certain  in  the 
future  to  be  more  jealous  of  its  own 
autonomy.  Public  sentiment,  irregular, 
imperfect,  sometimes  unreasonable,  as  it 
is  and  always  will  be,  grows  steadier  and 
more  intelligent.  Neither  Tammany 
Hall  nor  any  other  political  machine  can 
escape  its  influence.  The  pavements  of 
New  York  have  begun  to  be  better;  the 
streets  have  begun  to  be  cleaner ;  the  im- 
provement will  not  stop,  but  will  go  on  ; 
and  every  well-paved  and  well-cleaned 
street  is  the  best  kind  of  political  mis- 
sionaiy.  We  are  a  vast  distance  from 
the  filthy  New  York  described  by  Mrs. 
TroUope  and  Charles  Dickens.  Sanitary 
administration  has  been  improved.  The 
beneficent  work  of  organizations  like  the 
tenement-house  commission  has  grown 
remarkably  fruitful ;  and  it  gives  noble 
promise  for  the  future.  The  discredit- 
able poverty  of  New  York  and  Brook- 
lyn in  their  provision  of  parks,  and  es- 
pecially of  small  parks  near  populations 
which  cannot  resort  to  distant  pleasure- 
grounds,  has  at  last  yielded  to  better 
ideals.  There  is  nothing  more  cheering 
in  New  York  to-day  than  Mulberry  Bend 
Park  and  the  streets  around  it,  which 
have  taken  the  place  of  the  unutterable 
squalor  and  degradation  of  the  Five 
Points  of  one  or  two  generations  ago. 
The  city  is  better,  far  better  lighted. 
The  supply  of  water  is  better.  If  there 
be  more  gross  immorality  in  evidence 
than  there  was  in  the  village  days  of 
New  York,  the  increase  is  not  due  to  the 
general  deterioration  of  the  body  politic 
or  of  private  morals,  but  to  the  inevitable 
conditions  of  crowded  populations  and 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York.  115 


resorts  of  strangers,  —  conditions  which 
produce  precisely  the  same  result,  and 
sometimes  a  more  aggravated  result,  in 
London.  It  may  be  that  property  and 
life  are  not  safer  in  New  York  than  they 
were  sixty  years  ago,  although  about  that 
much  might  be  said.  But  without  any 
doubt  property  and  life  are  far  safer,  and 
the  administration  of  justice  is  more  trust- 
worthy, than  they  were  in  New  York  thir- 
ty years  ago,  at  the  time  when  its  suffer- 
ing from  the  shifting  and  varied  character 
of  its  population  had  reached  its  height. 
Indeed,  if  the  well-groomed  citizen  of 
New  York  who  indulges  in  the  luxury 
of  the  laudator  teniporis  acti  will  ask 
himself  whether,  on  the  whole,  the  aver- 
age private  life  of  the  average  honest  in- 
dustrious citizen  of  New  York  in  almost 
any  calling  be  not  better  to-day,  in  all 
respects  of  well-being  which  its  govern- 
ment can  affect,  than  it  was  a  generation 
ago,  he  will,  I  am  sure,  answer  in  the 
affirmative.  If  he  do  not,  he  is  a  very 
ignorant  man.  And  pray  what  higher 
test  is  there  of  the  merit  of  political  in- 
stitutions than  the  well-being  of  average 
private  life,  than  the  proof  that,  if  gov- 
ernment have  not  produced  such  well- 
being,  it  has  at  least  protected  and  per- 
mitted it  ?  Is  not  this  tlie  real,  even  the 
sole  end,  which  justifies  political  insti- 
tutions ?  By  what  other  fruit  shall  we 
know  them  ?  There  is,  perhaps,  greater 
moral  depression  in  our  time,  but  that 
belongs  to  every  advance  in  the  ideals  of 
life.  It  is  not  that  things  are  worse,  but 
that  people  require  better  things. 

We  now  come  more  specifically  to 
the  question.  What  is  the  tendency  to 
greater  good  or  greater  evil  exhibited  by 
the  New  York  election  ?  It  can  be  an- 
swered easily  and  surely.  Beyond  rea- 
sonable doubt  it  showed  a  remarkable 
and  cheei'ing  improvement  in  the  politi- 
cal temper  of  the  metropolis.  The  mu- 
nicipal election  of  1897  was  the  most 
signal  demonstration  ever  known  in  its 
history  of  the  growth  of  rational  voting. 
The  antiphony  between  rival  poUtical 


bodies,  neither  of  them  observing  any 
very  high  standard,  which  has  been  the 
type  of  its  politics,  has  at  last  begun  to 
yield  to  a  new  and  dominant  note.  The 
interest  of  the  commercial  and  business 
classes  in  local  politics  has  enormously 
increased.  From  among  the  masses  of 
hard-worked  labor  there  has  come  a  new 
and  wholesome  influence  represented  ef- 
fectively, even  if  without  much  theoretic 
logic,  by  the  candidacy  of  Henry  George. 
The  feature  of  the  result  first  noticed, 
and  the  only  feature  thought  of  by  many, 
is  the  plurality  of  80,000  votes  by  which 
Tammany  Hall,  representing  the  "  regu- 
lar democracy,"  elected  its  ticket.  Yet 
this  is  really  far  less  significant  than 
the  fact  that  in  November,  1897,  with 
all  the  political  trend  in  favor  of  the 
ticket  of  the  Democratic  party,  the  Tam- 
many vote  was  a  minority.  Of  the 
510,000  votes  for  mayor,  its  candidate 
received  but  234,000  as  against  276,000. 
Not,  indeed,  that  one  must  count  all  the 
other  votes  as  votes  for  good  administra- 
tion. Of  the  100,000  votes  cast  for  the 
Republican  candidate,  it  is  the  plain 
truth  to  say  that  a  large  number  were  as 
really  cast  for  bad  administration  as 
wei'e  any  votes  of  Tammany  Hall. 
Whether  the  Republican  or  Tammany 
proportion  of  voting  for  a  low  standard 
were  the  greater  is  of  little  moment.  If 
we  content  ourselves  with  the  151,000 
votes  for  Mr.  Low  and  the  22,000  votes 
for  the  younger  George,  being  together 
173,000,  as  representing  an  enlightened 
determination  to  vote  for  methods  of 
municipal  administration  intrinsically 
good,  there  is  reason  for  encoui-agement. 
Never  before  in  our  generation  has  a 
movement  without  the  organized  support 
of  one  of  the  two  national  jjarties  had 
so  great  or  nearly  so  great  a  vote  as  that 
given  to  Mr.  Low.  That  his  ticket  should 
not  only  be  second  in  the  field,  but  should 
have  a  support  much  stronger  than  the 
Republican  machine  ticket,  of  itself  de- 
monstrates the  improvement  in  political 
ideals  held  by  the  citizens  of  New  York. 


116 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  Neiii  Yorl: 


Other  figures  are  significant.  The 
vote  in  the  greater  New  York  for  Judge 
Parker,  the  Democratic  candidate  for 
chief  judge  of  the  state,  was  about  280,- 
000,  but  the  vote  for  the  Tammany- 
candidate  for  mayor  was  only  234,000. 
About  46,000  Democrats,  who  otherwise 
adhered  to  their  party,  repudiated  Tam- 
many control  upon  the  municipal  ques- 
tion. Perhaps  a  third  as  many  more 
voted  the  city  ticket  alone,  ignoring  their 
state  party  ticket,  so  that  in  all  jjrobably 
60,000  Democrats  voted  for  Mr.  Low. 
His  Republican  vote  was  about  90,000. 
Nearly  one  half  of  the  total  Republican 
vote  of  the  greater  New  York,  and  more 
than  one  fifth  of  the  Democratic  vote,  was 
cast  for  sound  municipal  administration. 

New  York  has  not  known  in  our  day 
another  such  vote  for  that  cause.  There 
had  not  been  any  serious  candidacy  since 
the  civil  war,  except  in  alliance  with  one 
or  the  other  of  the  political  machines. 
In  1892,  within  the  limits  of  former  New 
York,  the  Tammany  candidate  received 
173.500  votes  as  against  98,000  cast  for 
the  Republican  candidate.  With  a  large 
increase  in  the  total  vote,  the  Tammany 
candidate  in  the  same  boroughs  received 
in  1897  only  about  144,000  votes.  The 
progress  of  voting  in  the  borough  of 
Brooklyn  is  no  less  encouraging.  The 
Tammany  candidate  for  mayor  received 
there  about  76,000  votes  as  against  98,000 
votes  cast  for  the  Democratic  ticket  in 
1892.  The  1897  vote  was  smaller  rela- 
tively to  the  total  vote  than  the  vote  of 
the  Brooklyn  machine  in  1893,  when  it 
suffered  an  overwhelming  defeat  inci- 
dent to  its  complete  discredit,  nearly  one 
third  of  the  Democrats  voting  against 
it.  In  1897  the  Tammany  vote  in  Brook- 
lyn was  a  minority  vote,  the  vote  for  Mr. 
Low  and  the  Republican  candidate  to- 
gether outnumbering  the  Tammany  vote 
by  upwards  of  25,000. 

When  examined  in  greater  detail,  the 
Seth  Low  vote  gives  more  specific  pro- 
mise to  those  who  intend  to  persist  in 
political  well-doing.    He  received  more 


votes  than  either  of  the  other  candidates 
in  several  uptown  districts  including  a 
marked  preponderance  of  middle  class 
citizens.  Far  more  significant,  however, 
and  a  very  rainbow  of  promise,  is  the 
vote  of  nearly  15,000  which  he  received 
in  the  densely  populated  districts  south 
of  Fourteenth  Street.  In  the  fifth  as- 
sembly district,  stretching  back  from  the 
East  River  between  Stanton  and  Grand 
streets,  a  region  of  tenement  houses  hav- 
ing a  large  foreign  population,  he  re- 
ceived about  2700  as  against  3000  for 
the  Tammany  candidate  and  1800  for  the 
Re2:)ublican  candidate.  In  the  Brooklyn 
borough  his  vote  in  wards  along  the  wa- 
ter-front, where  the  tenement  population 
is  large,  was  very  considerable  ;  while  in 
the  districts  of  modest  two-story  houses, 
his  vote  was  far  larger  than  that  of  either 
of  the  other  candidates,  or  even  of  both 
together. 

These  facts  bring  their  real  encourage- 
ment, however,  only  when  they  are  com- 
pared with  the  past.  In  the  former  city 
of  New  Yoi'k,the  borough  of  Manhattan,^ 
we  can  only  make  an  inference  ;  for  as  the 
vote  for  good  local  administration  has  al- 
ways been  merged  with  the  machine  vote 
on  one  side  or  the  other,  we  have  no  pre- 
cise measure,  though  the  inference  is  a 
reasonably  sure  one.  Such  was  the  case 
when  the  Tammany  Hall  of  Tweed  was 
overthrown  in  1871,  and  the  Tammany 
Hall  of  Croker  in  1894.  But  in  the 
Brooklyn  borough  there  had  been  at  least 
two  such  tests.  In  1885,  at  the  expira- 
tion of  Mr.  Low's  four  years  of  mayor- 
alty, each  of  the  two  machines  presented 
a  situation  which  ought  to  have  been  un- 
endurable to  good  citizens.  A  third  nomi- 
nation was  made  by  citizens,  which  re- 
ceived 13,600  votes  as  against  49,000 
for  the  candidate  of  the  Democratic  ma- 
chine and  37,000  for  the  candidate  of  the 
Republican  machine.  The  13,600  votes 
were  probably  made  up  of  about  4600 

1  The  territory  now  called  the  borough  of 
Bronx  became  a  part  of  New  York  by  several 
recent  annexations. 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  Xew  York.  117 


Democrats  and  9000  Republicans.  In- 
stead of  being  encouraged  by  so  substan- 
tial a  beginning,  the  movement  of  the  citi- 
zens fell  to  pieces,  partly  perhaps  because 
of  the  real  temporary  improvement  which 
it  compelled  in  machine  management  on 
both  sides.  Ten  years  later,  in  1895,  a 
strictly  Democratic  revolt  was  organized, 
and  a  municipal  ticket  was  then  run,  not 
with  the  idea  of  securing  the  obvious  im- 
possibility of  an  election  as  against  the 
two  machine  candidates,  but  to  recom- 
mence the  definite  assertion  that  Ameri- 
can cities  must  have  local  government 
which  is  good  in  itself,  and  must  not  be 
shut  up  to  a  mere  choice  between  two 
evils.  The  candidate  of  the  revolting 
Brooklyn  Democrats  received,  and  with- 
out material  Republican  support,  up- 
wards of  9500  votes.  There  were,  per- 
haps, as  many  more  citizens  who  would 
have  preferred  his  success,  but  who  felt 
that  they  could  not  '•  tlu'ow  away  their 
votes."  This  modern  and  better  view 
did  not  then  have  the  sympathy  of  more 
than  ^0,000  voters  in  Brooklyn.  In 
1897  precisely  the  same  sentiment  was 
supported  by  upwards  of  65,000  votes,  al- 
most twice  as  many  as  were  given  the  Re- 
publican machine,  and  less  than  12,000 
below  the  number  cast  for  the  Tammany 
candidate. 

In  view  of  the  whole  situation,  the  vote 
in  the  greater  New  York  for  the  Low 
ticket  in  1897  must  be  accounted  the 
most  encouraging  vote  ever  cast  in  a 
great  American  city  on  the  exclusive 
proposition  that  the  city  ought  to  be 
well  and  honestly  governed.  Machine 
politics  in  the  United  States  has  not  re- 
ceived a  more  serious  blow  than  the 
treatment  accorded  the  Republican  can- 
didate for  mayor,  although  he  was  him- 
self a  man  of  the  highest  character,  of 
distinguished  ability,  and  of  long  and 
valuable  public  service.  But  for  his 
alliance  he  would  have  been  worthy  of 
the  mayoralty  of  the  city.  The  60.000 
Democrats  and  the  90,000  Republicans 
who  voted  for  Seth  Low  are  a  reasonably 


solid  and  sure  foundation  of  the  best  hope 
for  the  future. 

If  it  be  a  time  for  anxiety,  as  no 
doubt  it  is,  it  is  likewise  a  time  for  hope. 
When  Tammany  Hall  reached  its  grand 
climacteric  with  its  overwhelming  ma- 
jority of  1892,  there  again  revived  the 
belief  really  held  by  some  intelligent 
men  that  its  power  must  last  forever. 
Citizens  of  wealth  and  cultivation  had 
twenty-five  years  before  espoused  the 
cause  of  Tweed  as  a  sort  of  buffer  of 
corruption  and  cunning  against  the  more 
brutal  dangers  of  tlie  proletariat.  In 
1892  not  only  they,  but  even  scholars,  be- 
gan to  defend  the  Tammany  method  as 
a  form  of  municipal  administration  both 
inevitable  and  beneficent.  They  pointed 
out  that  Tammany  Hall  was  not  impos- 
sibly bad  ;  that  every  great  and  long  con- 
tinuous political  body  must  liave  some 
elements  of  soundness ;  that  from  time  to 
time  it  put  into  places  of  power,  as  it  has 
of  late  put  upon  the  judges'  bench,  men 
who  were  able  and  honorable,  althougli 
still  remaining  in  warm  and  active  sym- 
pathy with  Tammany  Hall.  Their  de- 
fense was  not  far  removed  from  the  po- 
litical philosophy  of  one  of  the  greatest  of 
Americans.  Alexander  Hamilton,  shar- 
ing the  eighteenth-century  English  view, 
deliberately  insisted  that  corruption  was 
a  necessary  cement  of  well-ordered  free 
political  institutions.  Too  many  Amer- 
icans of  our  day,  who  are  really  high- 
minded,  look  upon  some  sort  of  conces- 
sion to  the  deviltries  of  a  large  city  and 
some  sort  of  alliance  with  its  political 
corruptions  as  inevitable,  and  no  moi'e 
discreditable  than  the  bribery  of  a  con- 
ductor of  an  English  railway  train. 

The  administration  of  Mayor  Strong, 
who  was  elected  in  November,  1894,  has 
been  a  good  administration,  in  spite  of  its 
defects,  some  of  which  have  been  serious. 
If,  notwithstanding  its  merits,  it  be  fol- 
lowed by  Tammany  Hall,  it  ought  to  be 
remembered  that  New  York  has  had  other 
experiences  of  the  kind.  It  was  in  1859 
that  Fernando  Wood,  of  unspeakable  po- 


118  Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York. 


litical  memory,  was  reelected  mayor  of 
New  York  after  an  intervening  term  of 
a  most  respectable  "  reformer."  It  was 
to  Wood  the  reply  was  made,  when,  in 
solemn  demagogy,  he  declared  that  he  had 
a  "  single  eye  to  the  public  good,"  thatgood 
citizens  were  chiefly  concerned  about  his 
other  and  more  important  eye.  For  sev- 
eral years  before  1871  the  chief  ruler  of 
New  York  was  AVilliam  M.  Tweed,  who, 
after  the  completest  exhibition  made  of 
his  crimes,  and  when  he  was  under  civil 
and  criminal  prosecution,  was  elected 
state  senator  by  an  overwhelming  major- 
ity. No  one  ought  to  belittle  the  later 
iniquities  of  Tammany ;  but  it  is  irra- 
tional to  forget  that  they  were  mild  com- 
pared with  those  of  the  Tweed-Sweeney- 
Connolly  administration,  or  that,  with  the 
support  of  much  wealth  and  respectabil- 
ity, that  administration  was  approved  in 
1870  by  a  large  majority. 

If  one  look  back  over  the  history  for 
the  last  forty  years  of  the  two  great 
American  cities  now  united  in  one,  he  is 
bound,  no  doubt,  to  admit  that  the  gen- 
eral aspect  has  too  often  been  one  of 
cynical  and  indolent  acquiescence  in  stu- 
pid, barbarous,  and  brutal  maladminis- 
tration ;  that  the  natural  advantages  of 
the  city,  and  especially  and  irretrievably 
those  of  Brooklyn,  have  been  ruthlessly 
sacrificed  by  such  administration  ;  and 
that  the  masses  of  less  fortunate  people 
in  these  cities  have  suffered  and  now 
suffer  the  chief  results  of  it  all.  But,  to 
recur  to  the  principal  note  of  this  arti- 
cle, he  is  bound  likewise  to  admit  that 
the  evils  have  been  growing  less  and 
less  ;  that  Tammany  Hall  will  be  less 
evil  in  1898  tlfan  it  was  in  1890,  and  vast- 
ly less  evil  than  the  Tammany  Hall  of 
1870  ;  and  that  the  fundamental  condi- 
tions of  municipal  life  will  grow  better. 
The  new  and  decent  paving  and  clean- 
ing of  the  streets  cannot  cease  ;  they 
will  go  on,  the  best  missionaries,  as  I 
have  said,  of  good  politics.  The  public 
sentiment  which  has  endured  the  obstruc- 
tion of  crowded  streets  and  the  diminu- 


tion of  their  light  and  air  by  elevated  rail- 
roads will  no  longer  endure  them.  It  will 
cease  to  assume  ugliness  as  a  necessary 
element  of  our  highways.  The  schools 
must  increase  ;  their  methods  will  grow 
better.  The  preaching  —  some  more 
reasonable,  some  less  reasonable,  but  all 
helpful  —  of  the  thousand  agitatoi's  for 
better  things  will  go  on.  Their  instruc- 
tion, reaching  from  one  end  of  the  city  to 
the  other,  is  of  deeper  consequence  than 
organized  political  leadership,  vitally 
necessary  in  practice  as  that  is.  The 
population  grows  more  homogeneous, 
more  stable.  The  fatigue  and  chagrin 
incident  to  the  present  defeat  will  dis- 
appear. There  will  be  another  and  an- 
other and  another  political  campaign  in 
assertion  of  the  needs  and  duty  of  good 
municipal  administration  ;  and  each  will 
be  held  under  more  promising  conditions 
of  general  city  life  than  its  predecessor. 

Must  good  citizens,  then,  in  optimistic 
fatalism,  abandon  political  activity,  and 
rest  content  with  the  general  upward 
trend  of  human  society  ?  Are  we,  to  give 
up  the  noble  art  of  statesmanship  that 
leads  and  orders  political  progress  ?  Ai'e 
we  to  accept  as  final  the  dull  and  op- 
pressive mediocrity  which  even  friendly 
critics  say  belongs  to  the  public  life  of 
democracy  ?  Not  at  all.  No  better  thing 
has  been  accomplished  by  the  stirring  and 
elevating  mayoralty  camjiaign  of  New 
York  than  the  creation,  among  masses 
of  men  hitherto  indifferent,  of  an  enthu- 
siastic interest  in  political  affairs.  But 
this  will  not  suflice  without  the  disci- 
pline and  continuity  of  organized  politi- 
cal work.  That  work  now  needs,  in  New 
York  and  in  every  great  American  city, 
to  be  directed  towards  three  different 
and  practical  preliminary  results.  When 
they  are  attained,  as  they  can  be,  and  at 
no  distant  day,  we  shall  no  longer  fear 
Tammany  victories. 

The  support  of  the  merit  system  of 
appointment  to  office  is  first  and  fore- 
most. Of  the  specific  political  diseases 
which  we  have  known  in  the  United 


Political  Inauguration  of  the  Greater  New  York.  119 


States,  the  spoils  system  has  been  the 
mostpi'ofoundly  dangei'ous  and  far-reach- 
ing. Its  destruction  is  an  essential  con- 
dition of  sound  public  life  in  New  York 
and  in  the  United  States.  Civil  sei'vice 
reform  has  been  a  slow  growth,  but  a 
fairly  sure  one.  When  ofBce-holding 
and  office-seeking  are  no  longer  the  main- 
spring of  political  action  and  the  chief 
and  always  corrupting  support  of  politi- 
cal organization,  it  will  be  easier  to  use 
with  creditable  results  the  democratic 
method  of  successive  popular  judgments 
upon  the  fitness  of  rival  candidates  and 
parties  for  the  exigencies  of  municipal 
administration.  The  methods  of  the 
Tammany  or  Republican  machines  can- 
not survive  the  destruction  of  this  their 
principal  support. 

A  corollary  of  the  refor-m  of  the  civil 
service  ought  to  be  and  will  be  the  re- 
fusal to  continue  disparaging  public  life. 
When  public  life  shall  no  longer  involve 
patronage-mongering,  either  wholesale 
or  retail,  eminent  fitness  for  the  real  du- 
ties of  rational  public  life  will  neither 
avoid  it  nor  be  excluded  from  it.  If 
only  gi-eat  ability  and  the  highest  char- 
acter are  tolerated  in  private  employ- 
ment of  the  highest  grade,  nothing  less 
ought  to  be  tolerated  in  public  life. 
The  worn-out  absurdity  of  the  "  plain, 
sensible  man,"  without  equipment  in  ex- 
perience or  in  native  or  acquired  gifts 
for  difficult  and  critical  work,  will  dis- 
appear. Good  citizens  must  refuse  a 
mere  choice  between  the  rival  evils  to 
which  political  machines  would  constrain 
them.  They  must  vote  for  positively 
good  administration,  even  at  the  risk 
that  the  less  of  two  evils  shall  be  de- 
feated by  the  greater  for  the  lack  of  their 
support.  If  they  be  steadfast  in  this,  the 
American  democracy  will  return  to  its 
earlier  and  better  view  of  fitness  for 
important  places  in  the  public  service. 

Last,  but  not  least,  is  the  duty  active- 
ly maintaining  sound  political  organi- 
zations between  political  campaigns.  It 
is  easy  to  arouse  interest,  to  form  clubs. 


to  gather  meetings  during  the  few  weeks 
before  election  day.  But  when  such  or- 
ganized activity  begins  in  the  September 
preceding  the  election,  the  cause  is  prob- 
ably either  won  or  lost  already.  The 
decision  of  the  jury  is  reached  nine  times 
out  of  ten  before  the  learned  counsel 
sums  up  ;  he  can  do  little  more  than  give 
the  jurymen  in  sympathy  with  him,  if 
any,  arguments  to  use  with  dissenting 
associates.  If  the  evidence  have  not 
been  produced  so  as  to  make  the  case 
clear,  but  little  hope  of  success  remains. 
So  with  the  political  campaign.  It  is 
impossible  to  create  or  gather  the  public 
sentiment  or  the  organization  necessary 
for  a  political  campaign  during  a  few 
weeks.  It  is  amazing  to  observe  the  re- 
luctance of  liberal  and  intelligent  citi- 
zens during  the  rest  of  the  year  to  yield 
support,  whether  in  work  or  in  money, 
to  the  wholesome  political  organizations 
upon  which  alone  they  can  rely  to  pro- 
mote the  causes  that  are  dear  to  them. 
In  Brooklyn,  for  instance,  such  an  organ- 
ization doing  work  over  the  entire  city, 
reaching  or  seeking  to  reach  in  some 
measure  upwards  of  a  million  of  people, 
requires,  as  I  happen  to  know,  perhaps 
$10,000  a  year  for  effective  work.  But 
even  that  sum  of  money,  less  than  tlie 
cost  of  many  single  entertainments  given 
in  New  York  every  winter,  and  an  insig- 
nificant percentage  of  public  waste  every 
year,  which  sound  politics  would  check, 
can  be  got  only  by  compelling  the  very 
small  number  found  to  bear  the  burden 
of  the  work  to  bear  the  expense  as  well. 
Tammany  Hall  does  not  sleep  from 
November  until  September.  Its  most 
fruitful  work  is  done  then.  The  cam- 
paign of  the  New  York  Citizens'  Union 
in  1897  was  effective  chiefly  because  it 
began  early.  The  thoroughness  and  in- 
terest in  English  parliamentary  elec- 
tions follow  in  part  from  the  habit 
of  having  for  years  before  each  election 
more  or  less  systematic  discussion  look- 
ing to  the  coming  dissolution,  although 
it  be  far  off.    Without  such  activity 


120 


The  Present  /Scope  of  Government. 


enlightened  political  methods  will  not 
prevail  in  the  greater  New  York  or  in 
other  populous  cities. 

In  conclusion,  I  avow,  even  at  this 
time,  untoward  as  it  seems  to  many,  a 
profound  confidence  that  the  democratic 
experiment  here  on  trial  will  work  out 
well  even  in  great  cities.  The  disorder- 
ly, undisciplined,  slatternly  features  of 
our  politics  and  public  work  represent 
shifting  and  temporary  conditions.  They 
will  disappear  as  those  conditions  cease. 
In  the  very  dear  school  of  experience, 
the  mass  of  people  will  learn  to  insist  upon 
exceptional  ability  and  character  in  pub- 
lic administration,  and  to  vote  for  no- 
thing else,  realizing  that  without  them 
that  administration  must  be  contempti- 
ble. They  will  find,  even  if  they  find  it 
slowly,  and  even  if,  for  many,  life  must 
be  too  short  for  the  fruition,  that  the 
heavy  and  often  cruel  burdens  of  politi- 
cal incompetence  and  dishonor  fall  chief- 


ly upon  those  very  masses  of  which  and 
for  which  democratic  government  is  con- 
stituted. When  preference  for  good  ad' 
ministration  shall  have  been  developed 
into  a  powerful  popular  instinct,  as  it  is 
being  rapidly  developed  in  the  collisions 
and  misfortunes  of  our  politics,  the  in- 
stitutions of  sound  government  will  find 
in  the  United  States  even  a  broader 
foundation  than  the  marvelous  advance 
of  democracy  has  given  them  in  Eng- 
land. When  the  scaffolding  is  taken 
down  from  the  structure,  when  the  work- 
men are  gone  and  the  grounds  are 
cleared,  we  shall  find,  I  believe,  that  all 
the  turmoil  and  humiliation  of  our  polit- 
ical experience,  all  the  disorders  and 
disgraces  of  our  political  career,  have 
worked  out,  in  a  sort  of  survival  of  the 
fittest,  that  firm,  practical  political  com- 
petence among  the  masses  of  men  which 
is  the  best  and  broadest  safety,  and 
which  will  be  the  glory  of  democracy. 

Edward  M.  Shepard. 


THE  PRESENT  SCOl 

To  get  an  every-day  basis  for  discuss- 
ing the  present  scope  of  government  in 
America,  let  us  view  rapidly  the  experi- 
ences'of  an  imaginar}'  Bostonian  during 
a  day  differing  in  no  respect  from  or- 
dinary days  ;  in  short,  an  average  daily 
record  of  an  average  man. 

He  begins  the  day  by  bathing  in  wa- 
ter supplied  by  the  public  through  an 
elaborate  system  of  public  pumps  and 
reservoirs  and  pipes.  After  it  has  been 
used,  the  water  escapes  through  the  citi- 
zen's own  plumbing  system  ;  but  this  pri- 
vate plumbing  system  has  been  construct- 
ed in  accordance  with  public  regulations, 
is  liable  to  inspection  by  public  officials, 
and  empties  into  sewers  constructed  and 
managed  by  the  public.  When  he  has 
dressed  himself  in  clothing  of  which  every 
article  is  probably  the  subject  of  a  na- 


l  OF  GOVERNM^jrf^ 

tional  tariff  inteiided  to  affect  production 
or  price,  our  Bostonian  goes  to  his  break- 
fast-table, and  finds  there  not  only  ta- 
ble linen,  china,  glass,  knives,  forks,  and 
spoons,  each  of  them  coming  under  the 
same  national  protection,  but  also  food, 
almost  all  of  which  has  been  actually  or 
potentially  inspected,  or  otherwise  regu- 
lated, by  the  national  or  state  or  muni- 
cipal government.  The  meat  has  been 
liable  to  inspection.  The  bread  has  been 
made  by  the  baker  in  loaves  of  a  certain 
statutory  weight.  The  butter,  if  it  hap- 
pens to  be  oleomargarine,  has  been  packed 
and  stamped  as  statutes  require.  Tlie 
milk  has  been  furnished  by  a  milkman 
whose  dairy  is  officially  inspected,  and 
whose  milk  must  reach  a  certain  statu- 
tory standard.  The  chocolate  has  been 
bought  in  cakes  stamped  in  the  statutory 


\ 


THE  EECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YOEK  BY  TAMMANY. 


At  the  November  election  of  1894,  tlie  citizens  of  the  city  of  New 
York,  under  the  leadership  of  the  Committee  of  Seventy,  wrested  from 
Tammany  Hall  the  control  of  government,  and  elected  as  mayor  a  gen- 
tleman of  good  repute  as  merchant  and  bank  president.  The  legis- 
lature armed  this  officer  with  all  the  needful  authority  promptly  to 
remove  the  appointed  heads  of  the  departments  which  had  previously 
been  filled  by  Tammany  adherents,  and  to  place  others  in  their  stead. 
With  the  exception  of  the  head  financial  ofiicer  of  the  city,  all  or  nearly 
all,  the  old  chief  officials  of  the  city  government  were  changed  by  the 
newly  elected  mayor  ;  and  the  Tammany  organization,  which  had  been 
responsible  for  the  officers  in  power,  was  thus  stripped  of  all  patronage. 
Then  was  inaugurated  what  was  supposed  to  be  a  new  era  in  municipal 
administration  of  efficient,  honest,  and  faithful  public  service. 

An  investigation  before  a  legislative  committee  had  proved  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  Police  Department  of  the  city  under  Tammany  rule 
to  be  lamentably  corrupt.  It  had  also  proved  the  administration  of 
justice  by  the  lower  tribunals  having  criminal  jurisdiction  to  be  lax  and 
in  sympathy  with  the  Police  Department;  and,  though  it  was  not  di- 
rectly demonstrated,  it  was  generally  believed  that  a  like  inquiry  into 
other  departments  administered  by  the  adherents  of  the  Tammany  or- 
ganization would  have  resulted  in  a  like  display  of  inefficiency  and  mal- 
administration. The  escape  of  the  citizens  of  New  York  in  1894  from 
the  thraldrom  of  bad  government  almost  tempted  them  to  proclaim  Elec- 
tion Day  thereafter  as  an  annual  special  holiday,  like  Evacuation  Day, 
which  commemorates  the  removal  of  the  British  troops  from  New  York 
soil.  Yet,  in  the  short  period  of  three  years,  that  same  Tammany  or- 
ganization, banded  together  in  the  main  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining 
its  members  directly  and  indirectly  by  public  office  and  from  the  pro- 
ceeds of  compulsory  taxation,  and  under  the  same  leader  and  general 
officers,  triumphantly  returns  to  power  by  a  plurality  over  the  candi- 
date of  the  Citizens'  Union  of  82,457  votes ;  its  total  vote  of  233,997 
representing  nearly  a  majority  of  all  the  electors  of  the  greater  city  as 
created  by  the  new  charter. 


554 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


This  result,  accomplished  by  Tammany  without  the  element  of  pat- 
ronage to  assist  it,  would  seem  to  confirm  the  views  of  those  who  look  with 
distrust  upon  democratic  institutions, — particularly  in  their  application 
to  urban  populations, — and  would  seem  to  support  the  disparaging 
•  opinions  as  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  condition  of  the  New  York 
electors  ex])ressed  by  so  reputable  and  high  an  authority  as  the  London 
"  Economist "  in  its  issue  of  November  6  last,  which  says  : — 

"It  is  perfectly  vain  to  talk  about  remedies.  There  is  no  remedy  for  a  bad 
democracy  except  its  conversion  to  a  better  mind  ;  and  nobody  knows  how  that  is 
to  be  effected." 

That  periodical  sums  up  with  the  remark  that  a  majority  of  the 
electors  not  only  represents  the  community,  but,  for  all  purposes  of  col- 
lective action,  is  the  community  itself,  and  adds  :— 

"  If  New  York  has  deliberately  chosen  a  corrupt  government,  as  is  alleged, 
New  York,  be  the  cause  as  it  may,  is  itself  corrupt.  ...  It  is  nonsense  to  say,  as 
Americans  say,  that  England  is  greedy,  and  France  vainglorious,  and  Germany 
given  over  to  militarism,  and  then  to  say,  in  the  same  breath,  that  New  York  is  a 
respectable  city  because  only  the  majority  sanctions  disreputable  things.  What 
city  or  state  is  there  on  earth,  even  in  Africa,  in  wliich  the  minority  is  not  com- 
paratively decent  and  well-intentioned  ? " 

These  views,  in  so  far  as  they  imply  a  deliberate  preference  for  Tam- 
many rule,  are  deplorably  wrong.  Had  the  municipal  election  of  thi-ee 
years  ago  gone  amiss,  there  would  have  been  ground  for  such  criticism, 
which  is  not  justified  by  the  loss  of  the  election  of  1897. 

The  causes  of  the  reconquest  of  the  city  of  New  York  by  Tammany 
in  1897  will  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  economic  and  political 
conditions  of  the  city  during  the  three  years  of  Mayor  Strong's  adminis- 
tration, in  the  State  legislative  proceedings  during  those  three  years,  and 
in  the  use  which  was  made  by  the  citizens  of  New  York  and  by  the  city 
administration  of  the  opportunities  for  better  government  afforded  by 
the  election  of  1894. 

The  tax-rate  in  the  city  of  New  York,  which  is  mainly  gathered  from 
real  estate,  both  improved  and  unimproved,  was,  during  the  last  year  of 
Tammany  administration,  $1.79  per  $100.  This  was  a  large  enough 
exaction  from  the  thrifty  and  industrious  part  of  the  people,  whose 
moneys  are  invested  in  real  property,  and  who  had  the  well-grounded 
expectation  that  the  savings  which  would  be  occasioned  by  the  bank 
president's  administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  city,  as  against  the  Tam- 
many administration, — particularly  as  he  was  free  from  obligation  to  any 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY.  555 


organization  for  place  and  power, — would  result  either  in  a  consider- 
ably lower  expenditure  of  money  and  thereby  in  a  reduction  of  the  tax- 
rate,  or  in  an  enormous  increase  in  the  efficiency  of  all  the  departments 
at  no  greater  expenditure.  In  this  expectation,  the  citizens  of  New  York 
were  lamentably  disappointed.  During  the  first  year  of  Mayor  Strong's 
administration,  the  tax-rate  went  np  to  $1.91,  though  the  assessed 
valuations  of  property  had  increased  $13,616,625.  The  debt  increased 
$6,672,165.  The  charge  was  made  that  the  increase  of  the  debt  was  due 
to  Tammany  having,  in  order  to  make  it  appear  that  the  Reform  ad- 
ministration was  extravagant,  artfully  delayed  the  issue  of  bonds  and 
thus  accumulated  a  floating  debt  which  had  to  be  provided  for  by  such 
bond  issue  in  the  first  year  of  Mayor  Strong's  term. 

Were  that  charge  true,  it  would  account  for  the  increase  of  the 
funded  indebtedness  in  the  year  1895  ;  but  it  has  been  disputed,  and  has 
been  shown  to  be  true  only  to  a  very  limited  extent. 

Whatever  the  facts  may  be  as  to  1895,  this  charge  does  not  excuse 
or  explain  the  large  increase  of  the  debt  in  tlie  two  subsequent  years. 
Tiie  increase  in  1896  over  1895  amounted  to  $8,260,505,  and  in  1897, 
to  November  30,  amounted  to  $8,310,832  over  that  of  1896.  Further- 
more, this  matter  of  debt  represents  expenditures  in  addition  to  the 
general  budget  of  the  various  departments  for  each  year.  The  increase 
of  these  ordinary  expenses  in  years  of  great  financial  stringency  and 
distress  in  almost  every  department  was  a  sore  and  serious  disappoint- 
ment to  the  taxpayer,  because  he  argued,  in  the  rough  and  tumble 
fashion  of  popular  logic,  that  either  it  was  true  that  the  prior  Tammany 
government  was  an  extravagant  and  a  dishonest  one,  and  that  therefore 
the  amount  of  expenditure  in  these  departments  was  ridiculously  in  ex- 
cess of  actual  needs ;  or  it  was  not  true,  and  that  the  money  expended 
by  them  was  a  necessary  expenditure ;  or,  as  a  tliird  alternative,  that  the 
new  administration,  from  which  so  much  good  was  hoped,  was,  for  some 
cause  too  occult  for  him  to  understand,  incapable  of  afiiording  relief. 

The  second  year  after  the  Reform  administration  came  into  power, 
the  tax-rate  rose  to  $2.14,  the  assessed  valuation  of  real  and  personal 
property  having  been  increased  $89,537,243  over  that  of  the  previous 
year,  and  $103,152,868  over  1894, — the  last  year  of  Mayor  Gilroy's  ad- 
ministration. During  the  third  and  last  year  of  the  Reform  administra- 
tion, the  tax-rate  was  $2.10,  though  the  assessment  had  been  increased 
$62,150,951  over  that  of  1896  and  $165,303,819  over  that  of  1894. 
This  rate  was  fixed  upon  despite  the  fact  that  during  those  three  years 
the  actual  values  of  property  had,  through  the  erection  of  huge  office- 


556         THE  RECONQUEST  OP  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


buildings,  been  more  largely  increased  than  during  any  previous  period 
in  the  history  of  the  city.  Such  legitimate  increase  of  the  basis  of  tax- 
ation should  have  reduced  the  average  tax-rate. 

What  should  have  been  done  immediately  after  Mayor  Strong  came 
into  office  was  to  appoint  a  commission  to  investigate  every  department 
of  the  city  government,  with  the  view  of  reducing  the  number  ol  offi- 
cials necessary  to  accomplish  the  work  in  hand,  by  the  discharge  of 
many  who  held  sinecures  or  quasi-sinecures  at  large  salaries.  The  legis- 
lature and  the  city  government  had  for  years  vied  with  each  other 
in  multiplying  offices  so  as  to  strengthen  the  political  organization  in 
power,  or,  when  the  party  in  control  of  the  State  differed  from  that  in 
the  city,  in  adding  to  such  offices  so  as  to  divide,  between  the  party 
in  control  of  the  State  and  the  political  organization  in  power  in 
the  city,  the  incumbency  of  the  new  offices  thus  created.  It  was  the 
duty  of  the  Reform  administration  to  get  rid  of  all  these  useless  and  ex- 
pensive additions  of  office-holders  and  clerical  force,  to  make  an  official 
day  of  actual  labor  in  the  public  offices  six  or  seven  hours  instead  of 
three  or  four,  and  in  every  way  to  diminish  and  reduce  the  expenses  of 
the  various  departments  of  the  city  of  New  York  to  reasonable  busi- 
ness limits.  This  should  have  been  done.  What  was  done  was  to  put 
into  every  office  originally  created  for  mere  purposes  of  expenditure  a 
follower  of  one  of  the  factions  or  organizations  which  made  up  the 
army  of  the  Reform  movement  of  1894 ;  to  increase  instead  of  diminish 
many  salaries  in  the  departments ;  and  to  make  a  more  lavish  distri- 
bution of  public  moneys  for  new  construction  of  highways  and  build- 
ings than  had  theretofore  been  made. 

Another  duty  of  the  Reform  administration  was  to  exercise  a  most 
rigid  economy  so  as  to  make  the  people  feel  that  the  affairs  of  the  mu- 
nicipality were  conducted  upon  strictly  business  principles  and  without 
fear  or  favor,  and  thus  to  accustom  the  public  mind  to  the  receipt  of 
full  value  for  the  exactions  by  way  of  taxation  imposed  upon  the  pub- 
lic ;  thereby  sharply  differentiating  the  new  administration  from  every- 
thing which,  for  a  number  of  years  preceding  its  advent,  had  been  in 
operation.    This  duty  was  particularly  strong  in  bad  business  years. 

The  rapid-transit  underground  work  was  in  contemplation,  and  steps 
had  been  taken  to  make  it  a  fact,  when  Mayor  Strong  entered  office. 
The  work  could  obviously  only  be  carried  forward,  under  the  law,  if  the 
city  was  careful  not  to  overstep  the  limit  of  its  constitutional  debt-cre- 
ating power  after  including  the  amount  necessary  to  accomplish  this 
great  purpose  as  part  of  the  debt.    Yet,  during  the  years  of  the  Reform 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


551 


administration  a  large  number  of  other  improvements  was  undertaken 
at  great  cost.  The  Dock  Department  received  mOlions  of  dollars  for  im- 
provements of  the  water-front.  This  was  doubtless  a  sound  economic 
investment,  and  probably  will  ultimately  yield  a  larger  return  than  the 
expenditure  incurred.  From  some  points  of  view,  it  is  free  from  adverse 
criticism ;  but  from  another  point  of  view  it  is  subject  to  the  following 
criticism,  which  may  fairly  be  made.  Under  the  contemplated  rapid- 
transit  scheme,  to  carry  out  which  the  payment  must  be  made  out  of  an 
issue  of  bonds  within  the  constitutional  debt  limitation,  it  was  the  duty 
of  the  city  government  to  see  to  it  that  there  should  be  no  increase  of 
the  debt  (even  for  expedient  improvements  if  they  could  be  delayed), 
which  might  by  any  possibility  interfere  with  the  success  of  a  method 
of  cheap  and  rapid  means  of  transit  other  than  the  surface-roads  and 
elevated  railways.  And  all  schemes  such  as  dock  improvements,  the 
buildings  of  additional  bridges  over  the  Harlem  Eiver,  such  as  that  at 
145th  Street,  but  ten  or  twelve  blocks  from  the  new  Macomb's  Dam 
Bridge ;  the  laying  out  of  a  great  number  of  driveways  in  the  annexed 
district,  at  a  possible  expenditm-e  of  $5,000,000 ;  the  asphalting  of  many 
of  the  streets  of  the  city,  should  have  been  delayed  until  the  much- 
needed  relief  by  rapid  transit  had  been  accomplished.  So  that  the 
point  which  will  ultimately  have  to  be  determined  by  the  courts  is  now 
already  mooted,  whether,  since  the  rapid-tranelt  question  was  presented 
for  popular  adoption,  the  municipal  debt  has  not  been  already  so  much 
increased,  in  the  issue  of  bonds  for  other  purposes  during  the  past  three 
years,  that  the  money  needed  for  this  great  improvement  is  no  longer 
adequately  available  to  the  city. 

A  municipal  household  has  to  be  conducted  very  much  like  a  pri- 
vate business.  The  necessary  expenditures  should  be  met  first ;  and  each 
expenditure  should  have  a  relative  importance  to  all  the  others.  It  is 
no  justification  to  say  that  an  expenditure  is  useful  when,  because  of 
it,  a  very  much  greater  boon  to  the  community  must  be  postponed.  It 
will  be  a  great  check  to  the  prosperity  of  the  city  of  New  York  should 
its  citizens  fo;:-  many  years  be  deprived  within  city  limits  of  true  rapid 
transit,  from  which  so  much  in  the  way  of  comfort  and  addition  to 
values  has  been  hoped  for. 

It  is  true  that  in  one  department  of  the  city  administration — that  of 
Street  Cleaning — owing  to  the  happy  selection  of  its  head  officer,  a  de- 
gree of  eflS.ciency  was  attained  theretofore  unknown  in  the  city  of  New 
York ;  also  that  the  administration  of  the  Police  Justices'  Courts  was 
raised  in  dignity  by  the  selection  of  a  higher  order  of  incumbents. 


558 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


Had  the  superior  efficiency  in  the  street-cleaning  work  been  attained 
without  the  expenditure  of  an  additional  dollar  beyond  what  the  Street- 
Cleaning  Commissioner  had  at  his  disposal  when  the  department  was 
under  Tammany  rule,  it  would  have  been  a  rather  complete  demon- 
stration of  both  the  corruption  and  inefficiency  of  Tammany,  as  com- 
pared with  the  work  of  a  Eeform  administration.  It  did,  however, 
involve  an  expenditure  for  the  past  three  years  of  an  average  of  about 
$500,000  per  year  more.  No  one  begrudges  that  expenditure,  because 
it  produced  a  markedly  beneficial  result. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  Department  of  Education.  It  would 
have  been  a  fine  object-lesson  if  the  removal  of  the  public  schools  from 
improper  influences,  and  their  conduct  upon  a  high  plane  of  efficiency 
and  up-to-date  educational  requirements,  could  have  been  had  at  an 
expense  no  greater  than  that  which  had  been  indulged  in  under  the 
waste  and  knavery  of  Tammany  rule.  But  the  superior  efficiency  of 
the  schools  was  attained  at  an  expenditure  in  1895  of  $266,770 
in  excess  of  that  made  in  189-i  by  Tammany  ;  in  1896  of  $1,028,887  in 
excess  of  that  made  in  189-1.  In  1897,  the  appropriation  was  $1,437,501 
in  excess  of  the  expenditure  of  1891.  This,  without  counting  additions  to 
expenditures  provided  for  by  bonds.  The  citizens  of  New  York  would 
have  found  no  fault  with  these  expenditures  if  in  other  departments 
corresponding  savings  had  been  made,  because  they  argued  that  if  20 
per  cent  of  the  $34,000,000  theretofore  annually  expended  by  the  city, 
exclusive  of  the  interest  payable  on  the  public  debt  and  New  York's 
proportion  of  State  taxation,  was  wasted  under  Tammany  control,  there 
should  have  been  a  saving  of  almost  $7,000,000  a  year,  out  of  which 
these  beneficial  additional  expenses  for  education  and  cleaning  public 
highways  could  have  been  made,  and  still  leave  $4,000,000  to  go  to  the 
credit  of  the  taxpayers  and  in  reduction  of  their  taxes.  The  expendi- 
tures of  public  moneys  in  the  various  departm.ents  during  the  three  years 
of  the  term  of  Mayor  Strong,  who  stood  before  the  community  for  de- 
cency as  compared  with  the  professional  politicians  banded  together  un- 
der the  name  of  Tammany,  were,  with  some  few  exceptions,  as  large  as, 
if  not  larger  than,  in  the  years  which  had  preceded  his  incumbency. 

Furthermore,  a  set  of  non-economic,  socialistic,  and  philanthropi- 
cal  tendencies,  involving  considerable  expenditure  of  money  and  great 
irritation,  was  let  loose  upon  the  community  with  the  inauguration  of 
Mayor  Strong  on  January  1,  1895.  There  is  probably  no  other  city  in 
the  world  with  a  less  homogeneous  population  than  that  of  the  city  of 
New  York.    There  is  probably  no  other  place  in  which  the  demands  for 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


559 


helpfulness  and  cbarity  are  so  numerous,  and  where,  on  the  whole,  they 
have,  from  the  humanitarian  side,  been  so  faithfully  listened  to  and  an- 
swered as  in  this  self-same  city  of  New  York.  There  is  probably  no 
other  city  where  there  is  so  large  a  dependent  and  defective  class. 
There  are  few  cities  in  civilized  countries  where  there  is  a  larger  delin- 
quent and  dangerous  class.  With  the  latter,  the  public  arm,  through  the 
administrative  machinery  of  criminal  justice,  is  called  upon  to  deal.  The 
duty  of  dealing  and  caring  for  the  dependents  and  defectives  is  divided 
among  three  classes  :  (1)  Where  the  defectives  or  unfortunates  belong 
to  a  family  of  well-to-do  people,  or  where  there  is  an  active  producer 
who  earns  beyond  his  own  needs  and  who  is  imbued  with  a  high  sense 
of  duty,  such  defectives  and  unfortunates  are  taken  care  of  without  call- 
ing upon  organized  private  or  public  charities.  (2)  Where  the  deserv- 
ing poor  or  unfortunates  and  defectives  have  racial  or  denominational 
ties,  they  are  taken  care  of  by  the  denominational  and  private  charitable 
institutions  which  depend  upon  voluntary  contributions  and  endow- 
ments for  their  support.  (3)  Where  the  unfortunates  and  defectives  have 
no  such  advantages  or  claims  to  bring  them  under  the  foregoing  cate- 
gories, and  may  be  termed  "nobody's  poor,"  —  which  means  every- 
body's poor, — thej  must  fall,  and  should  properly  fall,  under  the  care 
of  the  general  taxpayer  and  be  a  charge  upon  the  public  treasury. 

It  is  in  the  interest  of  civilization  that  as  little  as  possible  of  chai"itable 
work  should  be  done  at  the  expense  of  the  taxpayers,  because  the  pub- 
lic officials  have  neither  the  machinery  nor  the  thoughtfulness  to  dis- 
criminate properly  as  to  the  objects  of  charity,  and  the  result  of  such  work 
is  usually  degrading,  and  necessarily  so,  to  its  recipients.  The  amounts 
expended  by  most  producers,  of  kindly  disposition,  in  strictly  private  and 
cooperative  private  contributions,  together  with  their  annual  subscrip- 
tions to  the  privately  organized  charities,  equal  sums  which  at  times 
raise  the  question  in  the  minds  of  the  thrifty  and  provident  whether 
self-denial  pays  when  so  much  of  the  proceeds  of  the  self-denial  goes  to 
those  who  are  thriftless  and  improvident.  Yet  all  this  is,  to  a  large  ex- 
tent, a  voluntary  burden,  and  has  a  tendency,  morally,  to  improve  the 
giver ;  but  when,  in  addition  to  this,  there  is  imposed  a  constantly  in- 
creasing expense  by  way  of  taxation  to  provide  for  an  enormously  large 
class  of  people  defective  and  deficient  in  industrial  capacity  or  morals, 
and  for  another  large  class  of  unthrifty  and  reckless  persons,  it  is  in- 
cumbent upon  the  city  administration  to  see  to  it  that  that  burden  shall 
not  be  so  excessive  as  to  take  from  the  provident,  thrifty,  and  useful 
members  of  society,  by  a  socialistic  distribution  of  their  means,  an  un- 


560         THE  RlCONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


reasonably  great  part  of  the  reward  of  their  virtues.  It  is  no  answer  to 
the  criticism  here  made  to  say  that  charity,  like  mercy,  is  twice  blessed, 
— blessing  him  that  gives  and  liim  that  takes.  By  all  this  is  implied 
voluntary  charity.  The  charity  extorted  by  the  tax-levy  can  scarcely 
be  called  "  twice  blessed  "  ! 

Immediately  after  Mr.  Strong's  administration  commenced,  the  pro- 
fessional philanthropists  attempted,  with  varying,  but  on  the  whole  con- 
siderable, success,  to  shift  upon  the  public  treasury  a  portion  of  the 
burden  borne  by  private  individuals  in  taking  care  of  the  dependents ; 
so  that  although  the  State  had  relieved  the  city  from  the  care  of  the 
insane  poor,  the  expense  of  which  formed  a  considerable  proportion  of 
the  total  outlay  for  charities,  yet,  on  the  whole,  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1896,  the  two  departments  of  Charities  and  of  Correction,  which  took 
the  place  of  the  one  department  theretofore  existing,  had  expended,  not- 
withstanding prior  waste  and  extravagance,  about  as  much  as  under 
Tammany  rule.  In  addition  there  has  been  expended  from  the  public 
purse  upon  private  asylums,  reformatories,  and  charitable  institutions 
a  sum  in  excCwSs  of  the  $1,275,426  spent  in  1894  under  Tammany  rule  ; 
viz.,  in  1895,  $1,314,654;  in  1896,  $1,302,217.  In  1897,  the  sum  of 
$1,527,051  was  appropriated  for  the  same  purpose. 

The  story  on  the  financial  side  is,  after  all,  told  by  the  city's  total  ex- 
penditures (exclusive  of  assessments),  which  were  in  1894,  $38,395,094, 
with  an  increase  for  every  year  from  that  time  until  it  reached  $48,229,- 
555  in  1897,  estimated  by  the  appropriation  for  that  year,  which  was  an 
increase  of  almost  $10,000,000  since  1894.  From  this  there  should  in 
fairness  be  deducted  an  increase  of  about  $2,500,000  in  the  State  taxes 
and  about  $400,000  for  increase  of  interest  on  public  debt;  making  an 
increase  of  about  $3,000,000  which  is  independent  of  the  budget  on 
household  account.  Deducting  this  $3,000,000  from  the  $10,000,000, 
there  is  an  increase  of  about  $7,000,000  in  the  general  expenditures. 
To  this  should  be  added  the  very  serious  consideration  of  the  increase  of 
the  public  debt  during  these  three  years.  The  net  debt  of  the  city  at  the 
close  of  1894  was  $105,777,855  ;  at  the  end  of  1895  it  was  $112,450,020, 
being  an  increase  of  $6,672,165 ;  at  the  end  of  1896  it  was  $120,710,- 
525,  being  an  increase  of  $14,932,670  over  1894;  and  at  the  close  of 
November,  1897,  it  was  $129,021,357,  or  a  total  increase  of  $23,243,502 
during  the  three  years  of  Mayor  Strong's  administration. 

These  figures,  showing  the  basis  of  the  citizens'  disappointment  at 
the  administration  of  Mayor  Strong,  can  by  no  means  be  interpreted  as 
a  defence  of  Tammany.    No  one  doubts  that  the  control  of  the  city  by 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY.  561 


Tammany  was  accompanied  by  flagrant  misrule ;  and  it  is  especially  un- 
fortunate, therefore,  that  no  serious  effort  has  been  made  to  prove  that 
it  was  so,  by  the  introduction  of  economy  and  by  reducing  such  elements 
of  expenditures  as  were  not  absolutely  essential  to  the,  public  weal, — 
thus  bringing  home  to  the  public  mind  the  great  advantage  of  placing  the 
government  in  the  hands  of  citizens  organized  otherwise  than  as  regular 
political  parties.  So  much  was  expected  in  this  regard  from  the  Strong 
administration,  and  so  little  performed,  that  a  condition  of  resentment 
was  aroused  in  the  public  mind  which  did  much  to  defeat  the  citizens' 
movement  of  1897,  that  was  so  earnestly  undertaken  and  carried  for- 
ward with  such  a  vast  expenditure  of  labor  and  energy,  and  which  on  its 
merits  was  so  deserving  of  success. 

Inspired  by  the  success  of  the  legislative  investigation  conducted  by 
Mr.  Goff  and  the  reputation  thereby  acquired  by  him,  quite  an  aimless 
lot  of  investigations  of  simple  and  minor  social  abuses  were  set  in  mo- 
tion. These  efforts  were  directed  to  the  object  of  making  people,  by 
force  of  law,  thoughtful,  considerate  and  kind  to  their  fellow- beings. 
The  laws  following  them  resulted  in  interfering  with  people  in  the  con- 
duct of  their  business,  and  produce  considerable  irritation. 

New  building  laws  were  enacted  ; — improvements  no  doubt  on  those 
theretofore  existing ; — but  they  were  enforced  with  a  rigor  previously 
unknown,  and  with  such  strictness  that  many  builders  of  tenements  and 
second-class  apartment-houses,  whose  motives  were  unquestionably  of 
the  highest  character,  abandoned  the  idea  of  constructing  tenements ; 
thus  depreciating  the  values  of  property  in  this  city.  These  laws  and 
the  manner  of  their  enforcement  added  much  to  the  general  irritation. 

Before  the  Strong  administration,  the  heads  of  the  city  government 
answered  the  charge  of  extravagance  by  the  excuse  that  the  expendi- 
tures were  imposed  by  legislative  enactment.  Some  of  the  expendi- 
tures are  still  remnants  of  that  condition  ;  but,  simultaneously  with  the 
inauguration  of  the  administration  of  Mayor  Strong,  there  came  into  force, 
a  constitutional  amendment  which  subjected  any  bill  involving  expen- 
ditures by  the  city  government  to  the  Mayor's  veto,  reserving  to  the 
legislature,  however,  the  right  to  pass  the  bill  over  such  veto.  The  ex- 
penditures involved  since  1894  in  such  legislation  met  with  the  approval 
of  the  Mayor,  and  are  fairly  chargeable  to  the  outgoing  administration. 

It  may  from  the  foregoing  be  therefore  justly  said  that  from  the 

economic  side  the  administration  inaugurated  in  1895  has  not  been  a 

success.    It  was  still  less  of  a  success  from  the  political  side.    Early  in 

the  year  1895,  the  legislature  passed  a  bi-partisan  police  bill  which  was 
36 


562         THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


of  sucli  character  that  it  aroused  the  adverse  criticism  of  almost  every 
conservative  element  which  aided  in  the  election  of  Mr.  Strong.  It 
continued  in  force  that  feature  of  police  management  which  theretofore 
had  divided  responsibility  and  aided  corruption.  It  was,  in  the  opinion 
of  experts,  worse  than  the  law  for  which  it  was  substituted.  It  was 
approved  by  the  Mayor. 

The  passage  of  the  Greater  New  York  Bill  carried  with  it  the  pos- 
sibility, which  is  now  an  actuality,  that  for  a  number  of  years  the  great 
powers  of  taxation  and  appropriation  of  public  moneys  in  the  city  of 
New  York  and  the  surrounding  districts  might  be  handed  over  to  a 
sinister  organization,  and  that  it  would,  in  any  event, — even  under 
favorable  political  results,- — operate  injuriously  upon  the  finances  of 
New  York  City,  as  constituted  before  consolidation,  for  the  benefit  of 
the  neighboring  towns  and  congeries  of  population.  The  injury  was 
inflicted  for  no  other  ostensible  purpose  than  merely  to  add  to  the 
numerical  count  of  the  citizens  of  New  York.  The  Bill  was  permitted 
to  be  advanced  and  its  active  promotion  was  participated  in  by  the 
Mayor,  who  gave  no  warning  to  the  community  as  to  the  possible  ef- 
fects of  the  measure.  After  the  report  of  the  Charter  Commission,  and 
when  the  passage  of  the  Bill  was  imminent,  every  conservative  interest 
in  the  city  of  New  York  was  awakened  to  the  danger  then  impending, 
and  made  protest  against  its  enactment ;  but  no  sign  of  cooperation  to 
save  New  York  City  from  such  a  danger  came  from  its  chief  executive. 

When  the  Bill  was  passed  by  the  legislature,  the  Mayor,  after  a  hear- 
ing upon  it  before  him,  declined  to  sign  it,  basing  his  objection  on  some 
minor  points ;  but  his  opposition  came  too  late  for  any  effective  purpose, 
and  the  Bill  was  repassed  over  his  veto  by  practically  the  same  vote  that 
had  originally  passed  it. 

The  Commission  to  draft  the  Greater  New  York  charter  seemed  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  without  minority  representation  in  the  municipal 
legislative  boards,  the  Greater  New  York  experiment  would  be  danger- 
ous. They  expressed  a  doubt,  however,  about  the  constitutionality  of 
such  a  provision — in  my  opinion  an  unjustifiable  doubt — and  yet,  despite 
its  importance  in  the  scheme  of  government,  no  serious  effort  was  made, 
either  on  their  recommendations  or  by  the  city  authorities,  to  postpone 
the  adoption  of  the  charter  until  minority  representation  could  be  con- 
stitutionally secured  in  the  Boards  of  Councilmen  and  Aldermen,  so 
that  should  the  city  be  recaptured,  as  it  has  been,  by  Tammany,  a  very 
substantial  proportion  of  political  power  could  still  be  retained  by  the 
better  class  of  the  citizens  of  New'  York.    The  matter  was  disposed  of 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY.  563 

by  the  Commission,  of  which  the  Mayor  was  a  member,  by  a  recom- 
mendation that  the  legislature  pass  a  constitutional  amendment 
providing  for  minority  representation  in  municipal  bodies.  This 
recommendation  was  wholly  disregarded  by  the  legislature.  The  char- 
ter was  promptly  passed,  and  through  its  instrumentality  the  hold  of  the 
powers  that  work  for  evil  upon  the  city  treasury  and  upon  the  appropri- 
ating of  other  people's  moneys,  was  strengthened  instead  of  loosened. 
The  term  of  office  of  the  Mayor  was  lengthened  to  four  years,  and  his 
power  greatly  enlarged ;  the  incumbents  of  office  were  made  more  de- 
pendent upon  the  Mayor ;  the  length  of  the  terms  of  office  of  heads  of 
departments  was  increased ;  and  no  safeguard  was  placed  anywhere  in 
anticipation  of  the  event  that  might  happen,  of  a  sinister  and  dangerous 
organization  once  again  taking  political  possession  of  the  city  of  New 
York. 

The  larger  street-railway  companies  of  the  city  seemed  to  have 
greater  immunity  from  the  control  of  the  departments  than  ever  before, 
and  obtained  the  right  to  change  motive  power  without  anything  like 
a  proper  return  in  money  for  the  additional  fraiichises  they  exercised. 
They  subjected  the  city's  inhabitants  to  great  distress  in  consequence 
of  the  extensive  physical  changes  they  made  in  such  motive  power,  in- 
volving the  tearing  up  of  the  leading  thoroughfares  simultaneously ; 
and  they  produced  a  greater  disturbance  of  comfort  than  had  ever  before 
been  suffered  in  the  history  of  the  city.  Whilst  this  work  was  being 
prosecuted  by  the  railway  companies,  the  Commissioner  of  Public 
Works  also  saw  fit  to  tear  up  the  great  avenues  of  the  city  which  had 
not  been  torn  up  by  the  railway  companies,  so  as  to  conclude  within 
his  own  probable  term  of  office  a  public  work  which  should  take  years 
for  its  completion.  These  two  instrumentalities,  operating  at  the  same 
time,  spread  discomfort  and  occasioned  zymotic  disease  through  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  city,  and  alienated  another  host  of  voters 
from  the  support  of  anything  in  the  shape  of  a  Heform  movement. 

The  liquor  law,  passed  during  Tammany's  control  of  the  city,  was 
enacted  with  the  view  of  not  being  strictly  enforced  in  a  cosmopolitan 
city  like  New  York,  and  probably  also  with  the  view  of  a  corrupt  ac- 
quiescence in  its  breach.  During  Mayor  Strong's  administration,  and 
in  the  hottest  of  the  summer  months,  Mr.  Koosevelt,  the  President  of  the 
Police  Board,  ordered  this  law  to  be  strictly  and  rigidly  enforced,  and 
in  this  course  received  the  full  support  of  the  Chief  Executive  of  the 
city.  This  action  alienated  from  the  Eeforra  movement,  and  from  fur- 
ther adherence  to  its  banner,  thousands  upon  thousands  of  followers 


564 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


who  regarded  such  strict  enforcement  as  an  impairment  of  their  personal 
liberty  and  a  senseless  and  needless  aggravation  of  their  discomforts 
during  a  protracted  period  of  extreme  heat  in  1895. 

Finally,  the  Eepublican  party,  within  those  three  years,  placed 
upon  the  statute  book  a  most  rigorous  and  unreasonable  excise  law, 
the  enforcement  of  which  went  far  beyond  Mr.  Roosevelt's  perform- 
ances during  the  summer  of  1895,  and  thereby  interfered  with  the 
personal  liberty  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  electors  of  the  city,  and 
with  the  habits  of  the  Germans  to  a  greater  extent  than  had  there- 
tofore been  attempted.  The  latter  met  the  taunt,  that  they  should  not 
allow  Sunday  beer  to  be  of  more  importance  to  them  than  good  gov- 
ernment, by  the  answer  that  they  should  not  be  asked  to  sacrifice  the 
exercise  of  their  innocent  indulgences  to  puritanical  legislation;  that 
the  question  of  their  personal  liberty  was  quite  as  important,  as  a  matter 
of  principle,  as  good  government  in  the  city.  Whether  they  were  right 
or  wrong  in  their  reasoning  is  beside  the  question.  As  regards  munici- 
pal matters  it  produced  in  a  large  class  of  the  voting  population  a  feeling 
of  positive  hatred  against  everything  that  was  labelled  "Republican" 
and  told  with  great  force  against  Mr.  Low,  the  candidate  of  the  Citi- 
zens' Union,  who  was  known  to  be  a  Republican. 

Therefore,  when  the  question  was  agitated  in  the  summer  of  1897 
of  nominating  a  Citizens'  Union  candidate  for  the  mayoralty  of 
New  York,  account  had  to  be  taken  of  a  widespread  feeling  of  re- 
sentment and  disappointment  against  the  existing  regime,  which  per- 
meated many  classes  of  electors ;  and  it  required  the  utmost  delicacy 
and  generalship  to  overcome  the  vast  masses  of  opposition  which  had 
been  accumulating  by  these  successive  events  and  mistakes,  and  to 
weld  them  again  into  a  united  host  against  Tammany.  Under  the  pres- 
ent system  of  representative  government,  which  recognizes  majorities 
or  pluralities  only,  and  without  the  acceptance  of  the  principle  of  Mi- 
nority Representation,  a  community  has  no  means  of  formulating  and 
making  its  protest  against  misrule  effective,  except  to  vote  for  those  in 
opposition.  Such  a  vote,  therefore,  can  in  no  way  be  held  to  imply 
sympathy  with  or  confidence  in  the  organization  helped  by  such  a  pro- 
test Of  the  233,997  voters  for  Tammany's  candidate,  not  one-half,  it 
may  be  safely  said,  were  in  sympathy  with  Tammany.  A  very  large 
proportion  of  this  vote — how  large  it  is  impossible  to  say — represented 
the  voters'  disappointment  at  the  measures  which,  and  resentment  at 
the  men  who  during  the  last  three  years  had  oppressed  and  disap- 
pointed them.    Unfortunately,  Mr.  Low's  candidacy  was  publicly  sup- 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY,  565 


ported  by  many  of  the  men  in  close  affiliation  with  Mayor  Strong's 
administration,  and  by  the  Mayor  himself,  and  also  by  a  number  of 
gentlemen  who  had  very  vague,  but  very  large,  sympathies  with  the 
defective  and  dependent  portion  of  the  community,  and  were  willing, 
if  chance  were  afforded  them,  to  play  the  part  of  beneficent  providence 
to  the  needy  through  the  pockets  of  the  taxpayers.  Thrift  and  enter- 
prise are  as  much  checked  and  possibly  destroyed  by  well-meaning 
communistic  distribution  out  of  public  funds,  which  have  to  be  raised 
and  replenished  by  the  taxpayer,  as  by  knavery.  Therefore,  move- 
ments to  take  from  the  provident  and  thrifty  the  means  whereby  they 
live,  and  to  compel  their  expenditure  upon  persons  whose  needs  they 
wish  to  see  provided  for  by  voluntary  contributions,  and  not  through 
force,  are  looked  upon  with  great  fear  by  the  provident  of  an  electorate, 
who  are  the  good  middle- class  of  the  community.  An  increase  in  the 
tax-rate  means  positive  hardship  to  them  and  to  their  families  and 
those  near  and  dear  to  them,  for  whom  they  have  striven  earnestly  to 
lay  by  the  means  to  prevent  the  possibility  of  their  being  compelled  to 
become  the  recipients  of  private  and  public  charity.  Many  voters 
hesitated  to  put  their  property  into  the  hands  of  persons,  who,  even 
from  good  motives,  threatened,  in  bad  times,  to  continue  an  era  of 
vicarious  philanthropy  at  the  expense  of  the  taxpayer.  The  philan- 
thropist has  his  proper  function  in  making  men  more  conscious  of 
their  duties  to  each  other,  and  inducing  them  voluntarily  to  contrib- 
ute from  their  abundance  to  supply  the  needs  of  those  less  fortunate 
or  less  intelligent;  bat  he  ought  not  to  be  placed  in  charge  of  the  pub- 
lic purse.  It  was  feared,  perhaps  groundlessly,  that  in  the  event  of 
Mr.  Low's  election,  some  provision  by  way  of  appointment  to  office 
would  be  made  for  certain  men  who  had  very  pronounced  tendencies 
to  use  the  public  moneys  in  charitable  directions. 

The  result,  therefore,  in  1897 — the  reconquest  of  New  York  by  Tam- 
many— is  no  indication  of  the  breakdown  of  American  institutions  or 
of  free  government.  It  was  the  better  element  of  New  York  that  an- 
tagonized the  voters  who  would  normally  have  been  in  favor  of  good 
government.  Their  mistakes  resulted  in  the  weakening  of  the  garrison 
and  the  opening  of  the  gates  for  the  entrance  of  the  enemy  whom  they 
had  ejected  three  years  before. 

New  York  has  not,  as  the  London  "  Economist "  charges,  deliber- 
ately chosen  a  corrupt  government ;  and  the  inference,  that  New  York 
must  itself  be  corrupt,  is  unwarranted.  New  York  was  resentful  at 
the  miscarriage  of  its  efforts  three  years  before.    No  people  living 


566         THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY. 


under  Democratic  institutions  as  now  organized,  and  without  true 
minority  representation  in  full  operation,  has  an  opportunity  afforded 
it  to  exhibit  such  resentment  except  by  inflicting  upon  itself  another 
wound;  and  that  was  the  unfortunate  situation  in  the  city  of  New 
York  in  the  autumn  of  1897.  It  may  be  true  that  the  wound  need 
not  have  been  inflicted  had  the  Republican  organization  been  under 
more  patriotic  and  wiser  leadership.  But  had  it  been  under  more  patri- 
otic and  wiser  leadership,  there  would  have  been  no  oppressive  Excise 
Bill  and  there  would  have  been  no  Greater  New  York  measure.  The 
death  of  Henry  George  during  the  campaign  may  also  have  had  some 
effect ;  but  his  following  was  grossly  exaggerated,  and,  whatever  it  may 
have  been,  was  probably  insuflicient  to  have  changed  the  result 

The  greatest  misfortune  of  the  situation  lies  in  the  fact  that  Tam- 
many is  secure  in  its  position  for  four  years  and  has  complete  control  of 
every  department  of  the  city  government.  If  the  election  had  been  for 
incumbents  of  but  a  year  or  two,  Tammany  might  very  readily  have  been 
made  to  feel  within  a  reasonable  period  of  time  that  the  victory  it  gained 
was  not  because  a  large  plurality  of  the  citizens  of  New  York  like  to  live 
under  Tammany  rule.  But  of  this  privilege  of  promptly  ejecting  the 
incoming  administration,  the  citizens  of  New  York  are  deprived,  not  by 
Tammany,  but  by  those  who  figured  before  the  community  as  the  most 
active  political  adversaries  of  that  institution  and  who  have  fastened 
upon  it  the  existing  chai'ter  for  the  government  of  Greater  New  York. 

Had  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  effect  of  minority  representa- 
tion existed  in  the  minds  of  the  promoters  of  the  new  charter,  and  of 
the  legislature  which  passed  it,  and  provisions  securing  its  benefits  been 
incorporated  therein,  let  us  see  how  much  could  have  been  done  to 
weaken  and  practically  nullify  the  recapture  of  the  city  by  Tammany 
Hall, — a  contingency  which  never  seems  to  have  presented  itself  to  these 
charter-makers.  We  will  assume  that  500,000  votes  were  cast  for 
councilmen  and  aldermen  in  Greater  New  York.  This  assumption  is 
made  because  it  is  easier  to  prove  the  situation  by  round  figures  than 
by  odd  numbers.  Let  us  assume  the  proportions  as  they  substantially 
stood,  and  that  220,000  votes  of  these  500,000  were  cast  for  the  Tam- 
many candidates,  140,000  for  the  candidates  of  the  Citizens'  Union, 
110,000  for  the  candidates  of  the  Republicans,  and  80,000  for  the  can- 
didates of  all  other  organizations.  Sixty  aldermen  and  28  councilmen 
were  to  be  elected.  The  vote  cast  would  have  given,  in  round  figures,  an 
electoral  quota  for  aldermen  of  8,000  votes,  and  for  councilmen  18,000 
votes.  This  would  have  given  the  Tammany  organization  under  minority 


THE  RECONQUEST  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  TAMMANY.  567 


representation  26  aldermen  of  the  60,  and  12  councilmen  of  the  28,  a 
minority  of  the  whole  number  in  each  body,  instead  of  the  48  in  the 
Board  of  Aldermen  out  of  60  and  the  26  in  the  Council  out  of  28  which 
they  obtained  under  the  existing  system  of  representation  and  by  which 
they  have  absolute  control  of  both  chambers.  The  Citizens'  Union 
would,  under  a  proper  application  of  the  principle  of  minority  repre- 
sentation, have  obtained  at  the  last  election  16  of  the  aldermen  and  8 
of  the  councilmen.  The  Republicans  would  have  obtained  14  of  the 
aldermen  and  6  of  the  councilmen,  while  if  the  votes  of  all  the  other 
organizations  had  been  concentrated,  4  aldermen  and  2  councilmen 
would  have  been  elected  by  them.  In  both  municipal  chambers  a  clear 
majority  against  Tammany  would  thus  have  been  elected  instead  of 
an  overwhelming  majority  in  its  favor.  This  Anti-Tammany  majority 
would  have  been  able  to  hold  the  Tiger  in  leash  during  the  ensuing 
four  years  of  the  administration  of  the  city  government. 

The  writer  of  this  article  hesitated  for  some  time  as  to  the  wisdom 
of  setting  before  the  community  the  facts  herein  stated,  he  having  par- 
ticipated in  every  Reform  movement  undertaken  in  the  city  of  New 
York  from  Tweed's  day  down  to  and  including  the  advocacy  of  the 
election  of  Seth  Low  as  Mayor,  and  sharing  with  his  fellow-members  of 
the  Committee  of  Seventy  of  1894,  the  responsibility  for  the  election  of 
Mayor  Strong.  He  felt  however  that  inasmuch  as  the  battle  of  muni- 
cipal reform  must  be  fought  again  and  again  until  success  is  achieved, 
such  success,  when  achieved,  could  be  made  permanent  only  by  a  clearer 
understanding  of,  and  no  illusions  about,  the  causes  of  the  failure  of  the 
friends  of  good  government  in  the  campaign  of  1897.  Any  contribu- 
tion to  public  discussion  having  that  end  in  view  must  ultimately  have 
beneficial  results.  Simon  Sterne. 


THE  POLITICAL  OUTLOOK 


I. 

The  aspects  which  frown  upon  the  practical  politician  at  this  mo- 
ment are  full  of  perplexity  and  contradiction.  The  practical  politician 
is  nothing  if  not  a  thick-and-thin  partisan.  His  main  reliance  is  the 
party  discipline.  His  stock  in  trade  are  the  offices.  Regularity  his 
shibboleth,  the  party  label  at  once  the  source  aod  the  resource  of  his 
authority  and  power,  he  is  equally  without  imagination  and  convictions. 
If  the  way  be  not  straight  before  him,  he  finds  himself  in  the  dilemma 
of  the  poor  boy  of  the  fable,  who,  having  neglected  to  learn  his  letters, 
could  not  read  the  sign-board  when  he  came  to  the  crossing  of  the 
roads. 

In  the  political  campaign  just  ended,  whilst  the  genii  who  are  sup- 
posed to  obey  the  summons  of  the  practical  politicians  did  their  duty 
by  Mr.  Croker  in  New  York,  they  failed  to  respond  with  their  accus- 
tomed promptitude  and  assiduity  to  Mr.  Gorman,  in  Maryland,  and 
denied  the  call  of  Mr.  Piatt  altogether.  Even  Mr.  Hanna,  with  the  Ad- 
ministration at  his  back,  could  have  wished  for  better  service  in  Ohio. 
In  Kentucky, — one  hundred  thousand  voters  remaining  away  from 
the  polls, — the  Silver  Democrats  had  it  all  their  own  way. 

Truly,  the  independent  vote,  representing  a  constant  but  uncertain 
state  of  rebellion  in  the  public  mind,  becomes  an  ever-increasing  and 
all-unknown  quantity.  Whether  the  obstruction  it  raises  to  the  per- 
spective of  the  drill-masters,  and  the  derangement  Ijius  brought  into 
the  process  of  estimating  party  forces  and  forecasting  elections,  be  merely 
an  incident  of  the  time,  or  a  new  and  fixed  element  in  American  poli- 
tics, may  not  be  stated  with  assurance.  Nor  can  it  b^  intelligently 
considered  unless  we  go  back  a  little  and  bring  up  some  arrearages  of 
political  experience  ;  for  this  is  the  pivotal  point  of  contemporary  spec- 
ulation, the  riddle  to  be  unravelled  by  the  practical  politicians,  the 
problem  to  be  solved  by  thoughtful  people.  What  does  it  mean  ? 
Where  is  it  going  ?  If  one  could  find  a  definite  answer  to  these  ques- 
tions, he  would  be  well  upon  his  journey  along  that  highway  which, 

I 


